It's truly embarassing how abysmal the average American's knowledge of geography is. The map above accompanied an article in the Washington Post:
On March 28-31, 2014, we asked a national sample of 2,066 Americans (fielded via Survey Sampling International Inc. (SSI)), what action they wanted the U.S. to take in Ukraine, but with a twist: In addition to measuring standard demographic characteristics and general foreign policy attitudes, we also asked our survey respondents to locate Ukraine on a map as part of a larger, ongoing project to study foreign policy knowledge. We wanted to see where Americans think Ukraine is and to learn if this knowledge (or lack thereof) is related to their foreign policy views. We found that only one out of six Americans can find Ukraine on a map, and that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther their guesses were from Ukraine’s actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene with military force.More at the link. I'll grant that some of the respondents may have been trolling the interviewers by pointing to Kansas or Canada, but I'm not surprised by the general pattern. I believe it was George Carlin who asked us to think of how stupid the average American is and then to remember that half of them are more stupid than that.
The only geography class I ever had was in fourth grade.
ReplyDeleteIn my adult life I have tried to teach myself geography by reading, specifically National Geographic, and by perusing maps, but I am still embarrassed at my lack of knowledge.
I am particularly embarrassed when I compare what used to be known as a "classical" education with what Americans are taught in schools today.
Don't be so quick to disparage modern education. From the article: "27 percent of 18-24 year olds correctly identified Ukraine, compared with 14 percent of 65+ year-olds."
DeleteI think the word you're looking for is "ignorant," not "stupid."
ReplyDeleteNo, he was quoting Carlin, and I'm sure he meant "stupid." It is not a terrible thing to be ignorant, but if you choose to wear your ignorance as a badge of honor, as many unfortunately do, then you are stupid.
DeleteThose bad guesses are telling. Where do so many of those people think Russia or the Black Sea are? Why would anyone click anything in thhe western hemishere, africa, or near the pacific? Its not just ignorance its a ridiculous failuure of those tested to have seemingly never bothered to learn about the world they live in.
ReplyDeleteSome of those answers were pretty funny. Hard to know if they were serious.
ReplyDeleteI spent some time in the US many years ago, and in travelling around I rarely met anyone who knew where my country was (Australia). Those who knew anything about it were even rarer. But when I mentioned to one American that I was surprised that the news programs never mentioned news from outside the US, I was told that because America was so big and there was so much happening there, there wasn't time in the news bulletins for anything else. OK then! I thought, but didn't mention, of my local suburban newspaper which manages to fill its weekly edition with "news" from this suburb. Is that evidence that this suburb is important, or just a very parochial world-view?
Best geography fail: I finally met a guy who responded, "I've always wanted to go there!" when told I was from Australia. I was excited to meet someone who had heard of my homeland. We talked for a couple of minutes, with him saying things like, "Such a beautiful country", and me just feeling happy, until he asked me, "How far do you live from Vienna?". I immediately realised our failure to communicate, and making a quick guess, said, "About 10,000 miles". His answer? "I didn't realise it was such a big country!"
:.)
DeleteThat’s great Virela!
DeleteMy best geography fail was when I was driving lumber trucks. I was just an assistant, helped load and unload. I got hitched up with a Somalian cab driver turned lumber deliveryman one day, and somewhere outside Baltimore, he got turned around a bit. I tried to help navigate, but he didn’t want any help, and the more lost he got, the more flummoxed he became, increasing his resistance to any help from me.
Finally, he rightfully determined he needed to be heading west. But he was going east.
“Youre right” I said “West is the way to go, but west is back the other way.”
“NO! I’m GOING WEST NOW!”
“I don’t think so buddy, west is back the other way” I offered.
“HOW YOU KNOW? HOW YOU KNOW THIS?” he shouted.
“Because its 6 O’clock in the evening, and the sun is setting back the other way.”
He was quiet a moment and finally, in his thick Somalian accent, said:
“You-can’t always- trust-the-sun.”
To his credit, he went another two blocks, then turned the truck around.
When in the northern hemisphere I frequently go east when I want to go west. My whole sense of direction is shot by the sun being in the "wrong" part of the sky. So it does even feel as if it is setting in the wrong direction. But Somalia is in the northern hemisphere, so that doesn't explain your driver's confusion.
DeleteGosh, I wish you'd run into ME. I'd have said "Australia? The greatest ally a country ever had! Greatest country in the Southern Hemisphere! And somehow they don't have much of a problem either with socialism or with income inequality! I wish I knew how they do it!"
DeleteMy wife went to college in Virginia, some of her fellow students thought her home state of New Hampshire was next to Germany, Delaware was part of New England, or the states in New England included: New York, Maine, Vermont, Boston, and connecticut.
ReplyDeleteInteresting article, but I found that image rather misleading. At first glance I assumed that the colour of the dots represented the respondents' political views regarding US military action. The line "The farther their guesses were from Ukraine’s actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene with military force" naturally made me assume that these two variables (estimated location and political view) would both be shown in the diagram, and coloured dots would have been an excellent way to do this.
ReplyDeleteInstead, the dots' colours are showing exactly the same information as their location. This seems a little too much like drawing a graph of time against time and saying, "Look at that clear trend!"
The author asserts a 95% confidence in the ignorance-invasion trend but gives no other details of how strong the trend is. I appreciate this isn't a scientific paper, but it could still have benefited from clearer methodology and analysis.
The color shows the distance from the correct answer. It is useful, since it converts the lat/lon data into distance data. But you are right, they should have presented the distance vs intervention data too.
DeleteThese surveys annoy me. I can just imagine people patting themselves on the back for being able to spot Ukraine on a world map. Big deal. That's such a small and unimportant thing to know. Here are some further questions they could ask: Name two Ukrainians that were not in the news this week. Can you tell the difference between someone speaking Ukrainian and Lithuanian? If shown a photograph of street corners in Kiev and Belgrade, could you pick out which was which, etc. Conversely, I can imagine an old man who lived in Kiev his entire life and knew everything about the country, but who never got a formal education and couldn't pick out his country on a map. I don't know why people are so concerned about the map test, other than it fits into a fun narrative about ignorant Americans.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is, most people care about things that are relevant to their own lives. That's true in any country.
"most people care about things that are relevant to their own lives."
DeleteThat's fine, and I would agree that is adequate... as long as they don't vote. When people vote for public officials, they are indirectly affecting their country's foreign and domestic policy. There is obviously no legal obligation to be well informed (or even to be literate), but I think there is a moral responsibility to be informed about affairs that your country might be involved in - especially if it might result in military conflict.
--Ryan