# Young US adults lagging in geography skills **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 4, 2004, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456 "2004-10-04T13:41:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Ithaka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Ithaka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ithaka)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2004, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/81 "2004-10-05T14:18:53Z")
> [@Balle\_M](#): > > Or perhaps they were concentrating on things that were, how shall I say it, USEFUL such as math, language, and science? I’m not sure I get you here. Are you being serious? If so, are you suggesting that geography is a useless thing to know about? Perhaps you are suggesting that it is less useful than maths, languages or science? Do you then mean that the study of these means that students simply don’t have the time / brainpower to study anything else? Perhaps you’re correct and western / US students have spent all their time getting really, really good at maths and languages. I’d love to see the evidence. Seriously, I don’t see the issue here. A bunch of 18-25 year olds did embarrassingly badly in a geography test. This is not good. It would be nice if our education systems could do better. I don’t understand any other reaction. ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2004, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/82 "2004-10-05T15:25:51Z")
> [@Gest](#): > > yojimbo, I wouldn’t limit that to kids of western countries. I agree BTW I just said western coz that’s the general audience of this thread but I agree that it really should be worldwide as that test is very easy. > [@](#): > > by **Balle\_M** > Or perhaps they were concentrating on things that were, how shall I say it, USEFUL such as math, language, and science? You’ve gotta be kidding me. You may have a point if the test was going into details that would be considered hard but it’s not. It’s asking very broad questions. Also some questions just highlight ignorance IMO not just bad education. eg. - Only 25% of US 18-24 year old identified the correct population range from mutiple choice answer. That’s just above the results you’d have got from random guesses. - Almost everyone was very low on the India and Chine population question - Only 79% of great British people could identify the USA on a map. - Anything less than 90% for finding Russia on a map is disgraceful as well IMO. These are just a few examples of what I would think is **general knowledge** that should be commonly known by almost the complete population of any country. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2004, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/83 "2004-10-05T21:38:16Z")
> [@irishgirl](#): > > Did anyone else have a jigsaw puzzle of the world? I had a wooden one of Africa, where you fit the countries together, and a cardboard one of the rest of the world. > > My mother was born in Zimbabwe, we asked where it was, she bought the puzzles. I still think of countires in the colours they were on those jigsaws. So, if you don’t think your kids know enough about geography, there are cheap, simple and fun ways of teaching them. I had a map puzzle of the USA states. In the corner was an alphabetical list of the states, with each state followed by the name of its capital city. I also had a map puzzle of the Canadian provinces and territories (of the latter, there were only the Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories back then). We (I’m the oldest child of four) also had a [Game of the States](http://www.liveandlearn.com/educational/gameofthestates.html) and a similar game called _Products and Resources_. For world knowledge, there was a version of [Cargoes](http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12236) that was even older than the edition depicted here, as well as the venerable [Risk](http://boardgamecentral.com/games/risk.html), which is responsible for many a person’s knowledge that such places as Kamchatka and Irkutsk exist. ---
**Author:** ![Sunshine\_and\_Smiles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Sunshine\_and\_Smiles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunshine_and_Smiles)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2004, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/84 "2004-10-05T21:49:51Z")
20/20, not too tough. No problem with Sweden either (but only because I went through a Scandinavia phase) ~S&S ---
**Author:** ![brad\_d](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@brad\_d](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brad_d)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2004, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/85 "2004-10-05T22:13:33Z")
19/20 I missed the religion one. What can I say? I’m kind of embarrassed, because I answered “Islam” with some confidence. The subsequent discussion of that question here has been informative. Now I know… ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/86 "2004-10-06T01:13:40Z")
Lots of Christians in Africa, you know, not to mention in Latin America. And it seems much easier to be a nonobservant Christian living in France than, say, a nonobservant Muslim living in Saudi Arabia. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/87 "2004-10-06T01:32:23Z")
> [@irishgirl](#): > > 20/20. > > I didn’t thought it was pretty easy, but then I probably couldn’t name the state captials of the USA…but hey, how many Americans could name the counties of Ireland? Um…Cork, Dublin, Limerick, Donegal, Kerry…um…Yeah, probably not too many Americans would get them. There are around 30 of them, aren’t there? There are people in the US who can’t even name all six states that make up New England, so I’m sure you’re right. I took this quiz the last time there was a thread on it and I got 18/20. I’ve never taken a geography class (wasn’t required in high school, and I didn’t care to in college), so I guess you can learn a fair amount of geography from reading. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/88 "2004-10-06T01:44:43Z")
I admit it. My geography skills are horrible - always have been. And yet, the quality of my life still seems rather high. Mostly, when I need to know where something is, I just look at a map. Never has a pilot or a bus driver asked me how to get where we were going. I consider myself blessed for that… ---
**Author:** ![gouda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c77e96/32.png) [@gouda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gouda)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/89 "2004-10-06T09:08:42Z")
20/20. Easy. Admittedly, geography was a favourite subject at school for me. Having said that, most 13 year-olds here would be able to max this quiz. Pre-college education in India is pretty intensive - you wouldn’t believe the stuff that kids here have to learn just to get through high school. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/90 "2004-10-06T09:35:25Z")
20/20 for me, too. I might have missed the Sweden or Afghanistan questions if some of the neighboring countries had been options, who knows. Some of the mistakes were embarrassing. For Americans not to know where Mexico is is absurd, especially when people in more distant countries knew better - sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. That might have made for a good comparison, by the way: how does the percentage of Americans who can’t find Mexico compare to, say, the percentage of Japanese who can’t find South Korea, or the number of Germans who couldn’t find Poland? (I bet the Poles hope there are a lot of those… oops… :D) ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/91 "2004-10-06T10:22:43Z")
> [@Early Out](#): > > I believe we’ve spotted your problem! (Hint - look up “Hinduism” 😉 ). Man! That was an embarrassing brain fart. I’m not really that stupid, but I play one on message boards. One of my favorite singers is Sheila Chandra, born in London of Indian heritage. I used to play her on my radio show, and several of her “bonus tracks” are songs sung in Hindi. So I knew that, I really did. I have no excuses for my brain-damage, but at least it didn’t come from ignorance. Really! > [@wolfstu](#): > > Canada is yellow, Ontario is pink or light green or white, Quebec is dark yellow. Manitoba is red or dark orange, Saskatchewan is dark green and Newfoundland is pink. You’ve made me want to go watch **Hope and Glory**. Snooty British teacher, tapping her stick on a map in the classroom, berating the unruly kids: “Men are fighting and dying to save the PINK BITS for you ungreatful little twerps!” Africa’s tough, so many countries have different names from when I went to school and learned them. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/92 "2004-10-06T17:05:35Z")
> [@Ithaka](#): > > And do you not find it slightly odd (appalling/embarrassing/shameful) that 75% of Americans tested couldn’t even make a ballpark guess at their own country’s population (the rest of the world did better on that question). I got that one wrong. Even though I just saw the answer less than 5 minutes ago, I’d get it wrong again if I took the quiz again. I simply cannot remember random numbers. It takes me a month to learn my own phone number whenever I move. I have trouble conseptualizing large numbers. I know what 10, 50, or 100 people look like. I do not know what 1000 people or 100 million people look like. After a while it’s simply just “one heck of a lot” in my brain. I have the same trouble with distances (how far from El Paso to New Haven? I’ve made the trip in a car but I couldn’t tell you) and times (like how old the earth is.) This makes being a chemist rather difficult at times, but I’m getting by so far by being sure I have important numbers on “cheat sheets” at all times. I also got the religion question wrong. I will remember that there are more Christians, but I will not remember how many supposed followers of a particular religion there are. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/93 "2004-10-06T17:43:52Z")
Now I want to go out and get some map puzzles. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/94 "2004-10-06T18:23:42Z")
> [@Offensive](#): > > I don’t believe those test results for a second. Were the tests graded somehow, or just anonymous “for fun”? I’m thinking a _large_ amount of people were having their fun at the pollers’ expense. “Young US adults”… You mean schoolkids? Let me guess, they were made to take a pointless ungraded geo test and allowed to leave when they were done with it. Exactly! I took several “survey” tests in my middle school and junior high years and as soon as you hear the word “ungraded” you don’t worry too much about getting the correct answer. For those that weren’t jazzed about school to begin with, it was an excuse to make designs with the scantron. And there’s nothing funnier to a sixth grader than having all your little friends fill out a sex survey. “Why yes, I lost my virginity at 9 to my 17 year old babysitter. We used a dirty sock for a condom, when we used one at all. After that I’ve had eleven different sexual partners. I am the father of three children and my partners have had eight abortions between them (I swear they weren’t mine)…” You get the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/95 "2004-10-06T23:30:44Z")
20/20, but I had the advantage of reading the thread first. I still would have gotten all of them. This is nothing new. When I was in junior high in 1965 a similar survey came out, showing, among other things, that hardly anyone knew where Vietnam was. When my kids were in junior high a few years ago, they got intensive map tests, far more detailed than anything I ever did. They also both had to memorize _Fifty Nifty United States_. I’m not sure if they’d remember them any more, since only us trivia freaks remember odd facts we seldom use. The test was given to 18 - 24 year olds, by the way, and we can see a 10% goof factor from the number of Americans who got the location of the US wrong (as compared to 3% of Mexicans who didn’t know where Mexico was.) ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2004, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/96 "2004-10-07T00:50:16Z")
> [@Selkie](#): > > Appalled that 11% of the U.S. test takers couldn’t locate THEIR OWN COUNTRY on that survey… I think this is a good argument for the fact that we’re not that dumb after all. Was there any incentive to get the answers on these right? I don’t believe for a second that 1 in 10 Americans **can’t** find the US on a map; they just don’t give a shit. ---
**Author:** ![Gest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9d8465/32.png) [@Gest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gest)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2004, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/97 "2004-10-07T01:57:39Z")
Being apathetic and lazy is _not_ a good argument that you’re not also dumb. And why would the foreign kids have any more incentive to get it right than Americans? ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2004, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/98 "2004-10-07T13:44:50Z")
> [@Gest](#): > > Being apathetic and lazy is _not_ a good argument that you’re not also dumb. And why would the foreign kids have any more incentive to get it right than Americans? Cultural divergence. Applying yourself to perform well in an intellectual pursuit for its own sake even when it does not profit you directly is a value more associated with societies other that American teendom, where it just makes you a geek, a nerd and a dork, while affecting a slacker attitude is “cool” and even “cute”. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2004, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/99 "2004-10-07T14:16:06Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Cultural divergence. Applying yourself to perform well in an intellectual pursuit for its own sake even when it does not profit you directly is a value more associated with societies other that American teendom, where it just makes you a geek, a nerd and a dork, while affecting a slacker attitude is “cool” and even “cute”. Which in itself is a symptom of problems with American society. If most American kids were intellectually stimulated and educated to the same degree as other cultures, there wouldn’t be a stigma attached to being smart. ---
**Author:** ![Gest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9d8465/32.png) [@Gest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gest)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2004, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456/100 "2004-10-07T14:30:51Z")
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s not smarts that are stigmatised but the _trying_ to be smart that is the mark of the geek. Wouldn’t the epitome of cool be the kid who was effortlessly smart and nonchalant about it? I can sort of understand this but am completely puzzled at how intelligence alone could be seen as a bad trait by _anybody_. As for the cause, is it really solely the failure of the school system? Although I have only an outsider’s view of American schooling, I can’t see what else could be done in schools to change these attitudes. Perhaps the fault lies elsewhere. What other features of US society are peculiar to America and could be responsible for the situation today? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-us-adults-lagging-in-geography-skills/267456.md?page=6)