This, for whatever sick reason, made me laugh:
Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn’t locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.
Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 fared even worse with foreign locations: six in 10 couldn’t find Iraq, according to a Roper poll conducted for National Geographic.
I guess one possible excuse is that LA was a little difficult to find, period, as it has been under a lot of water as of late. If we are to believe Ambrose Bierce, who stated that “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography,” more Americans might be able to find Iran on the map in a few years:
Iran threatened on Tuesday to attack Israel in response to any “evil” act by the United States and said it had enriched uranium to a level close to the maximum compatible with civilian use in power stations.
The defiant statements were issued shortly before world powers meet in Paris to discuss the next steps after Tehran rejected a U.N. call to halt uranium enrichment.
Senior officials from the U.N. Security Council’s permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany were to discuss how to curb an Iranian program that Western nations say conceals a drive for atomic warheads.
Things are heating up in Iran, and I don’t know what the future holds. I am afraid it is not going to be pretty. The best-case scenario would appear to be hoping for more moderate forces within the power structure of Iran to realize their current regime is insane, but with China and Russia not-so-secretly giving assurances that there will be no sanctions against Iran, the hopes for peaceful international pressure on the nation seem to fade.
Andrew
To be fair, one-third of senior administration officials couldn’t find Lousiana on a map, either.
salvage
Good thing GPS are getting cheaper.
VidaLoca
I’m living, at the moment in Salt Lake City. Yesterday on the way home, they had the environmental writers from the Salt Lake Tribune and the Las Vegas newspaper on the radio; topic of discussion was plans to start testing of heavy-duty bunker-busting bombs at the Nevada Test Site. This may be limited to conventional weapons or it may not, as I understood it (and I found this a little hard to believe) there’s no Congressional authorization required for testing of tactical nuclear bunker-busting weapons either. Not that I’m pleased to hear that they’re going to start with conventional weapons.
This is somewhat controversial here because of the history of A-tests in the 50’s and early 60’s. Have others of you who live in the Southwest heard anything about this?
Jill
The best case scenario would be for Bush to shut up and stop war-mongering.
Ryan S
And its only getting worse. This new no child left behind policy only tests two areas, reading comprehension and mathematics. My mother who works with children with reading difficulties. Has told me that other teachers are complaining that they have been told to work as much of these two things in as possible and lighten the load of other “non-essential” subject material, like history, and social studies. I’m sure map skills and geography will be the first to go.
PotVsKtl
They’re set to test at the Nevada site June 2nd. I don’t have any details, I just recall seeing the following video at C&L:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/04/19.html#a7970
Mr Furious
I wouldn’t be too hard on somebody mixing up some of the “square” states in the middle of the country, but Lousiana? It’s shaped like an “L” fer crissakes.
Maybe they couldn’t recognize it without the big white, fuzzy spiral on top of it…
PotVsKtl
KLAS Las Vegas
Jill
Listen to Randi Rhodes, she’s all over the nuclear testing issue.
David Schraub
Ambrose Bierce, not Pierce.
The Devil’s Dictionary is one of my favorite books, so…
LITBMueller
Heh. It would also be great if we had some moderate forces within our OWN power structure, too.
John Cole
Thanks, David. Must have had a brain cramp.
ppGaz
…
The turkey recipe has always been a favorite at our house.
The Other Steve
If Bush launches into a war against Iran, you may see the very first Military Coup in the history of the United States.
Punchy
Why learn where LA is when it’ll be part of the Gulf come this September? Hell, why learn ANY coastal geography with global warming raising the ocean? Pretty soon coastal cities will include Philly and Gainsville…
Bruce Moomaw
“…nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.”
What I really want to know is how many can spell it (especially in college). Still, we can rest easy in the confident knowledge that they have lots of self-esteem.
ET
Is it just me or does that statistics make you want to cry?
I cry harder knowing that these kids will likely get a diploma, many will go to college, and get jobs where they will have access to my credit card and/or social security numbers, be air traffic controllers/cops/firemen, etc. Yes, the though of putting my life in the hands of someone who can’t find one of the 50 states (assuming that know how many states there are) on a map is sooooo reassuring. If I didn’t have to work to keep a roof over my head and my cat in food and litter I might be tempted to barricade myself in my house and never come out……
BIRDZILLA
Yet these same young morons can tell you avery episode of THE SIMPSONS
KC
I’m still trying to figure out, what is war with Iran supposed to accomplish? Better poll numbers for Bush? I just think the hawks in DC aren’t really hawks, they’re just war pigs mainly who have to have an enemy at all times, everytime. Iran, no matter what we do, is going to do what any country does that just had its neighbor invaded–do things to defend itself. I mean, if Russia invaded Mexico, especially for reasons that turned out to be fairly illusary, you have to admit we’d probably elect a pretty “crazy” hard-right hawk to keep Russia from getting too close to us. I’m not saying the regime in Iran is wonderful or nice or good, I’m just saying we’re fighting against the obvious–by invading Iran’s neighbor we helped create this situation.
What’s worse though, to me, is that it seems we’re doing everything to make it worse. The Iranians have tried to talk to us, and the Bush administration keeps refusing. What bothers me even more is that talking with Iran might help our situation in Iraq too. I mean, lets be honest, the administration is just going through the motions at the security council for no other reason than to appear like they’re going through the motions. It’s really disgusting when you think about it.
John S.
They are the same morons that tend to vote Republican and love the President (like Britney Spears!) because the television tells them so.
Oberon
That means 4 out 10 CAN find Iraq on a map. I think that’s rather good.
Unless they were given maps with the countries already labeled. Then it would be rather embarassing.
james richardson
Was the map labeled?
Due respect, who cares? I’m sorry if I offend JC as an educator for saying this (BTW John, what subject(s) do you teach?) But you don’t have to be able to play pin the tail on the Iran to have some knowledge about it as a country.
This ticks me off because my schooling consisted of rushing memorizations of where countries are, taking the test, and forgetting them as we move onto the next continent. Do I have to be able to identify LA or Iran to have an opinion on Katrina or nuclear weapons?
It’s like people who get pissy because you don’t know the date. Why bother walking around with a fact that you can instantaniously find around you 20 times a day, anywhere?
Grrr.
Zifnab
YOu got to learn where Iraq and Iran were in high school? I think we studied as far east as Austria-Hungry, and even hurried back to Angleo-Franco-Spainish history ASAP the moment we got the chance.
To quote the first sentence of my history book regarding the Far East. “The Chinese Civilization emerged on the banks of the Yangze River roughly 3000 years ago, and then the English arrived.”
To this day it makes me want to cry.
ed
james richardson,let me get this straight. You don’t know where you are or where anything else is at or what day it is. Just a guess, but are you a senior White House advisor for the War in Iraq?
Perry Como
We don’t need to be able to find Iran on a map to know that starting a war there is a good thing. I’m sure we have some College Republicans pouring over Iraq strategy documents right now with white-out and a sharpie. Replace the q with an n and Mission Accomplished!
demimondian
The best story on the Natl Geographic quiz was the front page of MSNBC, trumpeting that some huge percentage of Americans couldn’t find Iraq — in front of a graphic which barely showed any of the country, being centered on the Suez Canal.
They’ve taken it down now — too bad, it was priceless self-reference, if not self-parody.
CaseyL
It does make a difference if the map wasn’t marked at all: you could probably point more-or-less to where Iran is, but you’re as likely to actually set your finger on the border area with Iraq or Afghanistan. So when they say “Couldn’t find Iran,” I’d want to know whether they were at least indicating the correct region or if they didn’t even know what part of which continent it was on.
Mississippi and Louisiana, though; there’s no excuse for not being able to find two of our own damn states.
That does remind me of the story from, oh, 15 years or so ago: Some high school students, when asked to identify a state in the Middle East, came up with answers like “Arkansas.” Because, see, they thought the question was about states in the middle of America… or something like that.
So appalling geographical ignorance is nothing new. The older I get, the harder it is for me to get worked up over how ignorant most people are about really basic things, because they always have been and they always will be.
trostky
It’s the 60 percent that gets me. These kids are recently out of school (if not in college). They probably know people in the military. I wouldn’t hold it against my countrymen and -women if 49 percent couldn’t find the country. But a decent supermajority, that’s embarrassing.
james richardson
Ed,
Yes, I gave to the GOP and am therefore entitled to White House position. The size of my donation guarantees me a job with a title that starts with Secretary Of ________ :-)
Perry,
Tru Dat.
YellowJournalism
I was in junior high during the first Gulf War. They still had geography classes back then in my district (geography/social studies requirements were cut down, thanks to NCLB). Guess which countries and their locations were drilled into us over and over? I can list and find all the countries of the Middle East, but the only reason I know how far away Germany is from Italy is because my fourth grade teacher was too busy planning her retirement to teach us anything other than how to plan a European vacation.
My point is, a lot of what you remember depends on what your teachers focused on in school. Thanks to new requirements that are pushing what are considered less important subjects out of the classroom, we will soon end up with kids who are more clueless about geography and other subjects than those 500 or so that were interviewed. But they may be able to explain who they came up with an answer to a math question, even though they have the wrong answer. They may also be able to write a point-by-point essay, although with terrible grammar and made up facts to support their poor reasoning. Now I’ll go back to my lurking.