Who should we invade next?

You and I know that, and maybe many ETers know that, but I still don't feel that "everyone in this country" knows it. So what's wrong in letting the rest in on our knowledge? The rest could probably do with some visual aids. The rest aren't probably going to read the newspaper.

You are absolutely right, I agree. It wouldn't prove anything, but in that case I feel it would do more harm than good, to show 100 people answering corrrectly. I think it could've been done in the Harvard cafeteria with not much better results. So, since we are trying to reinforce a known fact (derived from much better methods in the past), the 2 min clip, or however long it was, is not a waste of time and helps to visualize the epidemic, in my opinion.

Yes, I know. There are dumb people everywhere. Actually, I wouldn't call them dumb, just somewhat uneducated, that's all. And again, that's probably no fault of their own. So I don't think having a clip to point that out (even if we already know the facts) is doing any harm, unless pride and patriotism gets in the way. It's just reinforcing the need for prioritizing educational tax dollars.

respectfully,

SP

 

Why don't we take the least edcuated in any european country and ask them to name the provinces of canada.

BFD a man on the street in France can point out where England is. That is like asking a guy in new york how to get to shea or yankee stadium. Going from one country in europe to another is similar to going from one borough to another. Or going from georgia to florida. I bet you can find a lot rednecks in georgia who can tell you where florida is.

 

Let's invade Elite Trader. At least we can win that one (everyone running around like a chicken without a head)

We need to put some points on the board for a change.

 

I absolutely agree. It's still too bad that one would have to use the "least educated" european for that example, but I can relate, because I couldn't tell you the provinces of France, Germany, or every county in England, and I love maps.

There's a video on the net of a famous Michigan documentary filmmaker who visited Seattle during his book tour. ( I won't mention his name...) On this book tour, which was held in an average sized sports stadium, so I'd have to say >5000 people in attendance, he asked anyone with a a grade point avg. of 4.0 to come up to the stage. About more than a dozen or so of the best and brightest could not name the capital city of Canada, let alone the provinces, as you mentioned. One of those on stage was a university prof visiting from Detroit, so you'd think he'd have an unfair advantage. They were then asked to name any 3 countries that border Iraq. You can imagine how that went. Crazy answers came, like places that weren't even middle east. This was done at every stop on the book tour with the same results.

 

1/16/2006

Off the map: When it comes to global geography, Americans are lost.

By Lisa Ryckman, Rocky Mountain News - January 16, 2006

Where in the world are Americans when it comes to knowing where in the world everybody else is?

Nowhere - that’s where.

“It’s isolationism of the mind,” says Phil Klein, associate geography professor at the University of Northern Colorado. “Sometimes Americans don’t think they can learn from other places.”

What Americans are learning from other places - places like Iraq, Iran and Israel - is how little they know about what’s happening in the world, and how important it is to know more. More people can locate Iraq on a map these days, Klein says, but they don’t know diddly about its people and culture.

Enter Roger Andresen, who ditched his job as a fiber-optic engineer three years ago to wage a one-man campaign against America’s geographical cluelessness.

“I went out and gave a simple geography quiz to 400 people on the streets of Atlanta, and they all realized they were pretty bad at it,” Andresen says.

“Then I asked them, ‘Do you care?’ And I found out that a lot of people weren’t happy about it.”

Andresen’s not happy about it, either. Greater global awareness has become his mission and his business, inspired by a study that showed - among other appalling statistics - that 11 percent of young Americans ages 18 to 24 couldn’t locate the United States on a map and nearly 30 percent couldn’t find the Pacific Ocean.

The National Geographic–Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey polled more than 3,000 18- to 24-year-olds in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and the United States. Sweden was tops, and Mexico was at the bottom. The U.S. was next to last.

American involvement in other countries made little difference. Just 13 percent of young Americans could locate either Iraq or Iran. They were much more likely to know that the island featured in the reality show Survivor was in the South Pacific.

“We as a country don’t place as much value on it,” says Michal LeVasseur, executive director of the National Council for Geography Education. When the No Child Left Behind Act was expanded to include nine core disciplines, geography was the only one that wasn’t funded for teacher training, she says.

“To understand events in the world today is almost impossible unless you have a geographical perspective,” she says. “No one was up there championing the cause.”

Surveys tend to focus on the ability to locate places on a map, as if that’s what geography is, LeVasseur says. But geography, which straddles social and physical sciences, encompasses culture, environment, political issues, globalization, resource management and information systems.

Unfortunately, they all get lumped under the vague heading “social studies,” an area that loses out when forced to compete for precious class time with subjects measured by standardized tests.

Still, geography education might be experiencing a renaissance, says Klein, who also is co-coordinator of the Colorado Geographic Alliance, a 5,000-member group of geography and social studies educators.

“Every 20 years or so, we rediscover that in order to become aware of the world, we have to learn about it and have some interest in it,” he says. “It’s really trying to get at the idea that learning about the world is important if you’re going to live in the world.”

In the 2002 survey, travel and language acquisition improved geographic knowledge: In the highest-scoring countries - Sweden, Germany and Italy - at least 70 percent of the young adults had traveled internationally in the previous three years, and at least 90 percent spoke more than one language.

In the U.S. and Mexico, only about 20 percent had traveled abroad during the same period, and the majority spoke only one language.

“When you travel from one side of Europe to the other, you go across 40 different countries with 40 different cultures and 40 different languages,” Klein says. “But you can travel from San Francisco to New York, and it’s 3,000 miles of the same culture.”

Andresen has his own theory about why Americans often take an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach to the world.

“We get caught in a rut where we’re working so hard, we stop caring about the rest of the world,” he says. “We just forget about it.”

To help change that, Andresen created a 600-piece global puzzle and the world’s largest geography contest (www.geographyzone.com), which challenges players to locate 10 randomly selected countries on a map of the world.

On the contest’s international leader board, players from the United States ranked 96th, behind places like Nauru, Togo, Comoros and Gabon. Our ranking might have something to do with having no idea where those countries are.

To be fair, the U.S. did occupy the top spot for two days in August. At last count, it’s still three-tenths of a percent ahead of Canada.

The current worldwide leader - inexplicably - is Kyrgyzstan. In the U.S., Colorado comes in 22nd with just over 65 percent correct; if it were a country, it would rank 138th, between Sri Lanka and Cape Verde.

The key to moving the state - and the nation - out of the geographic wilderness is to get kids interested early, says Klein, who still has the treasured globe his parents gave him for his eighth birthday.

“I have maps all over the house, and we’re always tripping over atlases and globes,” he says. “That’s probably excessive, but I’m a geography nerd.”

Andresen might be helping create a new generation of geography nerds. His online challenge has attracted more than 1.5 million players from 192 countries, and he recently unveiled a feature that allows teachers to set up contests between students. The new section includes contests on world capitals, bodies of water, rivers and mountain ranges.

It’s fun - and sometimes humiliating. But after a month of taking the test three times a day, Andresen now scores 100 percent every time.

“The worst part for Americans is all the Pacific island countries,” he says. “And anything that ends in stan.”