It is a widely known fact that people just don’t know their Geography. Americans in particular are notorious for it, but that led me to wonder just how well the rest of the world knows where places are on the map. National Geographic once ran a survey among people between the ages of 18 to 24 in nine countries to test their geography skills. These countries included the USA, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Sweden, Germany, France, UK, and Italy. Of the 56 questions asked, Sweden came in first place with an average of 40 questions answered correctly. After them came Germany followed by Italy. Americans answered only 23 questions right while Mexico came in last place with 21 questions. Just above them were the UK and Canada with a score of 28 and 27.
According to these numbers, 39% of Americans would have failed the test and 9% of Americans would have gotten an A. What is especially alarming about this is that the questions asked were said to have been at the fifth grade level or lower. Some of the questions that Americans did the most poorly on were locating the average population of the country, which only 25% got right. They also had the most difficultly locating Japan, Russia, Afghanistan, and Argentina. Americans also had trouble associating Afghanistan with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and locating the Pacific Ocean, though the Swedes did even worse on this question. However, 89% of Americans could identify the USA, better than the Germans, Italians, and British. Another interesting question that was asked was how confident Americans thought they were about their geography skills. The average answer was 59% which shows that they tend to overestimate just how much they know.
The results of this test should alarm educators in our country. Obviously, too little time is being spent on Geography in our schools. At the same time, the US spends much more for education than Sweden, Germany, and Italy. More Americans go to college than Italy and Germany despite their higher scores, and half of Americans are said to display a “low literary rate”. American math skills rank 17th in the world as well at the 12th grade level. The US also comes in second in claiming they are bored in school most of the time behind Ireland. Obviously, educators are not utilizing the time they have to teach children what they need to know, making us the laughing stock of the world.
On a plus side, however, one website last year started the World Geography Cup. It encouraged internet users from both the US and the UK to take a test measuring their geography skills to see who would do better. At the end of the year, the scores were added up. The US team scored a 62% with 41,885 participants, and the UK team scored 57% with 10,820 participants. This means that with more people participating and with more of a chance to bring our percentages down, the US beat the UK at the geography game. So, maybe there’s hope for us yet.
For related information visit http://www1.epinions.com/content_4418871428 and http://www.geographycup.com/.
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2 users commented in " Statistics Show Americans Aren’t Only Ones Who Have Trouble With Geography "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackWithout any disrespect to Laura’s opinion, those other countries who spend less on education with apparently better results do not educate the way we in the US do. Those bastions of Socialist goodwill weed out students with lower academic potential and shunt them off to vocational training, never to be scored by the media again. Those nations, who pride themselves on their social conscience and scorn the US for our ’selfishness,’ also exclude -in most cases- students with severe physical disabilities or profound intellectual disabilities.
We could surely catch up, but at what cost? Should we leave our challenged brothers and sisters behind in the manner of the Europeans?
I teach geography and give map quizzes to my students each semester. Many of my students are international students. My empirical numbers indicate that international students are not significantly different in their knowledge of country locations. They tend to do better in their own region, i.e. Japanese do pretty good with identification of Asian countries, but score no better for Europe or South America or Middle America, and Europeans have as much trouble with South Asia, Middle America, and South America as everyone else. Just my experience.
Geography is taught in schools, usually at the 4th grade and 8th grade level, but not by geographers, by history or social science teachers. Too many anecdotes I hear about these teachers having their students read Newsweek or read CNN and that is their geography lesson.
We are the laughing stock because we do not invest in education. We spend money on equipment, but not where it really matters. We let teachers decide that they want shorter work days and shorter school years. Today, my kids are told they need to learn to read at home rather than in school. IN MY DAY, we read in school all the time, and every student read, whether they could or not. We didn’t go home at 2.25pm, we went home at 4pm. And we read both at school and at home, and we had homework. A lot of homework.
We are scoffed at abroad because we spend $57 billion dollars on our national education system and $570 billion dollars on defense. We are scoffed at domestically because of unfunded mandates (No Child Left Behind) and unrealistic goals and expectations (again, No Child Left Behind).
We are hurting because the same students that we have reduced expectations for as students then want to become teachers and then, after becoming teachers, expect even less of their students and have no expectations of themselves. Many of students, roughly 60%, are teachers-to-be and are usually the worst students themselves, having little respect for the academic climate, homework, attendance, attire, classroom demeanor, or their own achievement.
Our educational system, while suffering now, is only going to become worse, as this aura of entitlement that permeates college graduates furhter diminishes our global leadership role.
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