Too Much To Dream

I'm also nearly certain that I've seen similar "surveys" which show that European and Australian schoolchildren are not much better at locating other countries on a map. Hell, most people aren't intuitively good at using maps.

Once again, the "ignorance differential" raises its head (not my term, but one that I think is enormously useful): Americans ignorant about the world generally recognize their ignorance, while other people ignorant about America often nevertheless think they know everything. Canadians are particularly irksome about this. For example, I can remember giving something of an extended lesson on Canadian political history and constitutional law to...a tour guide at the Canadian Parliament. Isn't that even slightly embarassing?

Ands, that's the whole point. We have no interest in where anything is on the map unless

a.) we're going there on vacation or

b.) we're going to bomb the shit out of it.

Well, you know how those Canadians are. Them and the rest of Europe.

We don't have to know where it is - we have smart bombs to find it for us.

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography"

No, I can't remember who said it.

Well, I used to love looking at our old atlas when I was a kid. Maybe I'm a weirdo. (Okay, what do I mean maybe.)

The National Geographic Society, when they're not publishing cheesecake, likes to write hectoring press releases about how kids in most other countries are much better than Americans at finding things on maps. So there seems to be at least some measurable difference.

By accident I ended up with a fifth-grade teacher who liked to teach geography, so I ended up getting fascinated by the subject and learning a lot. But this was apparently an unusual occurrence.

Amen. I was fuming about a similar thing the other day...reading some Time or Newsweek tripe about how Americans know so little about other cultures, languages, etc, because we are so "insular" and rarely travel to other countries. The fact is...we don't HAVE to travel outside of our borders: we have every culture right here! I love America.

Anecdotal, I realize, but my wife - a British citizen - has been asked by Americans in four separate instances where she learned to speak English so well. You'd think they were joking - they weren't - these idiots had no idea that the English speak, uh, English.

I could only hang my head in shame.

She's also been told she sounds Swedish, German, and French. Go figure.

Um -- yes, anecdotal, there are dummies everywhere. What state were you in, what was the background of these people, what were their professions (if any), level of education (if known), and so on? And when you say your wife is "English," what do you mean? What part of England is she from? There isn't just one English accent. For instance, the accent in the North of England is markedly different from that of Oxford, or London, or Cornwall. And there are non-English languages spoken in Great Britain -- Gaelic and Welsh, and I believe there are a few speakers of Manx and Cornish left, unless those two languages died out. Anyway, if your wife has a British accent that isn't one of the more commonly heard ones on tv, then maybe they do think your wife is from some other country.

I wasn't claiming that all Americans are equally intelligent -- just that we aren't equally stupid either. And calling us "geography-shy" doesn't really make any sense -- it's like calling people "astronomy-shy." Geography is an interest, and the only people who really need to know it are geographers. It is good to know many things, but it really doesn't affect most people if they don't know what the capitol of Hungary is, or where the Carpathian Mountains are. I am more worried that people don't seem to know the things they need to know, because they are wasting their time on trivia in order to appear "well-rounded."

Arthur Conan Doyle seems to have been of the same mind. He made his character Sherlock Holmes perfectly indifferent to the matter of whether or not the sun went around the earth or vice-versa, much to Dr. Watson's horror.

I've updated my site with a non-apology, or perhaps a semi-apology.

I can assure you that most Europeans are completely clueless when we get a map of the US and are asked to indicate where whatever state is situated and what it's capitol is. Since you, contrary to Europe, manage to operate as a unity of all the states together, we simply don't need to know.
(this seems to be the best english i can manage...)

Andrea,

I'm fairly sure that the last native speakers of Manx and Cornish are dead, but quite recently: certainly within the last thirty years or so.

Irrelevant European,

Oh, but you do need to know, and just don't realize it precisely because Europeans are so ignorant about America. The fact is, with respect to many things, Brussels now has a far more direct hand in the internal affairs of EU members than Washington would ever dream of with respect to US states (EU "federalism" is not federalism but centralizing unitarism). They're not just lines on maps marking out administrative regions -- they're sovereigns, and the overwhelming majority of American governance is done at the state level (or below, but that's still a matter of state law).

Phil in the very first comment is right. A poll of New Zealand 12-year-olds showed that only about 30% were sure which hemisphere held NZ. One lad at least knew it was an island, but pointed to Iceland.

I could not find the Mauritians or Azores on a blank map, myself, and it would take a while to find NZ (northeast of Australia?), but it is not because of any bloomin' phobia. I havent solved a differential equation since High School either, and I liked math.

Southeast -- well kind of east-southeast I guess.

I admit it, I was a geography geek in school, and when the maps all started changing after 1989 I suffered a relapse.

Anybody wanna know the capital of Croatia? Huh? Anybody?

Other people (Americans) have sent me that StrategyPage map. It's a good information source, owing to the frequent updates and the annotations. But it barely even qualifies as a map--hello, I can't see the Tigris or the Euphrates behind the planet-sized unit designations. The actual map part, behind the symbols, might as well not even be there. Although he's left out the sideshow in the north, CF Sgt. Bruce Rolston is doing a vastly better job of mapping qua mapping, despite having a day job.

Heh. When I was in sixth grade, in Canada, we were asked what the capitol of Canada was. Montreal and Toronto were the popular answers, there were even a few Vancouvers. The one who said Ottawa? Me! The dumb American of the class :)

That's "capital", with an "a", Ith.

The confusion comes from the fact that we have a "Capitol Building" in Washington D.C., which is the capital of the US. I've found myself making that mistake all the time, even though I am otherwise perfect.

PS: Rolston's map is another one I've seen recommended. Me? I like those old-fashioned ones on -- what's that stuff called... oh yeah, paper. It's easier to put stick pins in a paper map; all the pins do to up my monitor screen is scratch it up. ;)