Talking To Americans is famous in Canada.
But Iraq hasn’t, and there’s the rub.
I have a copy of that on VHS around here somewhere. The audio is crap at the beginning (well-used tape), but it still gives me chuckles just to think of it. I need to dig it out and watch it again.
“And geography, it’s true, has served me well. I could tell the difference, at first glance, between China and Arizona. It’s very useful, if we have strayed during the night.”
I never liked geography. Map colouring drove me nuts. I can read a map and follow directions, and I tend to research the places I go to, or places I need to know about to make a decision, but at the end of the day, I probably wouldn’t be able to label the American states, let alone many other parts of the world (in my defense, I’m canadian…and I know where Iraq is). There are other things in the world to know. We can’t all know everything.
Good one! 
::: GASP :::
Well, Iraq does have pyramids…of a sort. The Ziggurats, while maybe not as cool as the Egyption Pyramids, still count.
This was my main point of the OP. Will pointing out Iraq on a world map save your life someday? No of course not. But like El_Kabong said if you can’t find it on a map you probably can’t make informed decisions that will greatly affect that country (and yours).
For instance if my country happened to be at war with another country I would do a little research and decide for myself if I should support said war (no matter what I would support the troops, just maybe not the war). I would at a minimum find out the following:
[ul]
[li]Where they are on a map[/li][li]A brief history of that country[/li][li]What they did to bring this on? What we did?[/li][li]Their population and religious beliefs[/li][li]etc[/li][/ul]
After doing this I would probably be able to make an informed decision.
I can almost (almost) see how some young Americans weren’t able to find Iraq on a map, but what about the ones the couldn’t find the state of Louisiana on a map? WTF? If I didn’t know that before Katrina I sure the hell would have looked that up ASAP after the fact. Or how about New York or Ohio?
BTW CNN had a geography quiz, I got 6 out of 6 on Beginner, 4 out of six on Intermediate and 3 out of 6 on Advanced.
MtM
I like what you bolded in your post. My experience here in the US was, in the early grades there is a lot of rote memorization. There is little to no explanation of why these things are important. There is no way as a student of that age, to see what use all this might be some day (if any).
“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” OK, So what. Besides, the Vikings got there before him anyway. What about all those Indians who discovered America before Chris or Leif did? They don’t count I guess (?).
“Father So And So founded the Eternal Misery Mission in Blahblah California in 1639”. Again, so what.
“Lower Slobbovia is south of Upper Slobbovia”. So what.
To an already uninterested kid, it’s just unrelated and irrelevant junk. It isn’t until later that you start to realize it may be useful, or at least interesting for its own sake.
I can find Iraq on a globe or map. I can find lots of countries. It’s easy for me. As I am also interested in ham radio, I even get to talk to these different places. Will I change the world? Not a bit. Still, it’s interesting. You get to hear for yourself what “they” are doing or thinking about, without the news “middleman” getting in the way.
I like history (now). It’s interesting to learn (mostly on my own) that regardless of their technology and the information they had, people were just as smart (and also just as stupid) as we are. People were just as noble (or ignoble) as we are. They built things, that even we don’t know how they did it. They also failed at making things we might find trivally simple.
There is too much emphasis on memorizing. There is too little emphasis on WHY they did things and on WHY things happened. To generalize, it’s as if “they” have discovered a way to suck the enjoyment out of everything. It also doesn’t help or encourage much interest when The Absolute Dogmatic Truth gets proven wrong every so often.
"Never memorize what you can look up". - Albert Einstein
I could add, never take any absolute fact at face value.
Oh, they’re pretty cool, I just automatically thought Egypt.
I keep looking for this Bosnia place, but I can’t find it. All I can find on my map is some place called Yugoslavia.
Hey, did they make Yugos in Yugoslavia? And what if there was two people who both wanted to go somewhere? Did they call it Wegoslavia?
Oddly enough they did, for the same reason that an American car company was named AMC.
Does anyone know of an online geography test in which you would be given a blank map and a list of countries and asked to match them up? I couldn’t find one, but it would be interesting.
This is pretty close, and a lot of fun.
I respectfully disagree. I’ve been learning quite a bit recently about Dubai - I’ve read articles, watched an excellent documentary series, etc, etc. And while I know roughly where it is, if presented with a blank map, I would probably only be in the right area, not right on. It is perfectly possible to learn about people and their cultures without detailed geographic knowledge. They’re separate fields.
I have no idea if we’re bad at geography in this country abd before I offer any thoughts about why we might be, I’d just like to share a quick story: I was coloring maps in school back in 1998, when I was 16 years old, in an honors Social Studies class in one of the best public school districts in New York state. Students in other classes were doing that too, of course. We all had to bring colored pencils to school and color the maps. And this wasn’t something we spent a single day doing, either. That’s just an anecdote, of course, but it makes me wonder how many children aren’t learning these things because practically nothing is being demanded of them.
It’s easy to point and laugh at people who don’t know geography, and it doesn’t often have a major impact on your life. That said, though, it’s not asking too much for American students to know the states in their country. And while it is not critical to know where Iraq is to understand the issues at play over there, I do wonder if American schools can possibly be doing a good job of imparting knowledge of current events if they can’t even get the students to remember where Iraq is.
What’s horrifying? The girl is working exactly where she should be - behind the register of a McDonalds. The system works.
Well then I choose to be the kind of stupid that gets me paid.
The point is that most of the time you don’t need to know a lot of useless crap. I happen to because some of it interests me, but for the most part, if I never knew a thing about Iraq it would not change a single thing with the world. I don’t make foreign policy. I don’t have clients in Iraq. I don’t go there to buy my groceries.
That said, that doesn’t mean you should be willfully stupid like the people in the “ask the man on the street” bits you see on the talk shows. But once again, how smart do those people need to be? They have a nice simple lifestyle of working at Starbucks, living with their three high school pals or at their parents and going to bars or the movies or whatever. Everyone can’t be a doctor or lawyer or leader of business. We need people who we can say “make a copy of this while I go do important work” (like what I’m doing now).
I was thinking, this same percentage of people who can’t find Iraq on a map, are probably the same percentage of people that believe Saddam Hussein/Iraq were behind 9/11.
I remember (sorry no cite) that at one time there was a poll and a shockingly large percent (I thought it was 50%+) thought that Iraq was behind 9/11!!!
Whoops I found it, and sorry it was 69%. Here is the cite .
That’s even more scary than not being able to fine Iraq on a map!
MtM
This came up on another board I belong to. Rather than reposting my whole response, I’ll just summarize.
Schools should give students a general base of knowledge and skills. While the vast majority of them will never end up using most of what they learn, we can’t know ahead of time who will need what. So it’s important that everyone learn enough of everything to be able to do something later in life that does require specialized information without having to start from scratch.
Thus while knowing any particular fact is largely irrelevant, the general ignorance of large swathes of basic knowledge is symptomatic of a failure to properly educate the populace.