why US citizen are so igorent about geography?

Question

if you ask me to show you on a map where madagascar, switzerland, norway or brazil is, i can show you with no problem.

but apparently many of you in the USA have no idea where these places are.


what do you learn at school?what do you do for 12-13 year at school?

it s amazing, but many in the USA, have even no clue where continents are or dont know even what a continent is.

Answer 1

Seriously man .... and ask them about the eastern continents .. stuff about India or China or Russia ... and its like Rocket Science for them .. lolzz

*Not like i hate American people or anything ... but you Americans really ARE kind of ignorant when it comes to knowing stuff about different countries *

Answer 2

The "schools", meaning the public, government-run ones, are pathetically inadequate. There is no national standard for expected performance, so what qualifies as proficient in Missisippi, for example, doesn't even come close to what is considered to be proficient in Wyoming.
When I was in public grade school in California in the 1960s, the state was ranked #1 in education in the US, and geography was a separate, 2 semester course. Today, it fits under the umbrella of the waste-basket term "social studies", and the class spends ONE instructional unit of 5 days on it in 5th grade (age 10).
As it turns out, most high school students know nothing about our Constitution, the branches of government, and have zero clue about the Bill of Rights.
I recently saw a video production done by a Canadian called "Dumb Americans". Not even an a Harvard professor (who was at least 50) knew there was no "seal pup clubbing" in Saskatchewan, a land-locked province.
My daughter-in-law attended public school in Serbia, and when she came to the US 7 years ago, she knew all the US states and their capitals, as well as all of the Canadian provinces and THEIR capitals. She also spoke, spelled and wrote better Engish than most native speakers here. She is now at university and gets all A's.
I hope to God our educational system gets fixed, and soon. The government is clearly "dumbing-down" the electorate who are "educated" in the public schools. It's a good thing we have private schools, but that will only make elitism worse.
I'm moving to Mallorca.

Answer 3

Most Americans are ignorant of foeign geography because teaching in the US is very egocentric. A lot of time is spent learning the 50 states, and state capitals, the production of various areas. US geography is done in great details at the expense of World Geography. Also the US education is very focused on reading and written comprehension. It is thought that if people can read very well and understand what they read then they can pick up a book and learn whatever they want. Of course it does not work that way because you are unlikely to want to read something you have never been exposed to, but that's the way the teaching philosophy works here.
Moreover, All TV News are local and almost never talk about what happens outside of the US. The "World section" usually focuses on the other states and sometimes Canada and Mexico.
What happens is that the US economy is so big that most Americans will never have to interact with a foreign land in their life. In the midwest, in particular, it is not unusual to meet mid/upper class people who have never had a passport and have only traveled in the US. You will even find people who have never left their state or county.

Answer 4

The USA's basic education system is broken in many ways, two of the most important being (1) we "teach to the test", meaning that standardized tests have become so critical in the measurement of progress of students and schools that many classes will only teach the bare essentials of what students need to know to pass the test; (2) what our children do learn is very america-centric.

Regarding geography specifically, in our school system geography is basically considered an elective subject. It's just how the priorities have come out, and it's unfortunate.

Not all of us are geography dunces, however, trust me. It's not an unjustified stereotype, but it's sad nonetheless.

Oh, and one last thing: I just have to laugh, or shake my head sadly, or both to this poster: "don't stereotype. not all American's are stupid. I know very well where all the continents are, and they're names." She rails about how good at geography she is, but can't even write her own language without lazy grammatical errors ("American's"? "they're"? come ON). Maybe you paid attention in geography, my dear, but you get an F in English.

Answer 5

because a lot of our schools either dont teach much of it or do a poor job at teaching it...i think most of our geography is about learning the 50 states and their capitals and maybe some important land marks like the rocky mountains....it seems like we just learn the names of the states and not their actual location...some people in the US cant even find the state they live in on a map of the US....its pathetic.

Answer 6

It's because we have a lot of lazy dumbasses over here. I wish you wouldn't generalize though. We don't all fit into that category. I assure you that myself and the folks I'm around can show you where places are on a map.

That's the stuff you learn in grade school. And some of us even went to college you know.

Answer 7

US electorate can shuttle to Cuba. Shouldnt be a situation for tourism applications. There are no flights to Cuba from any part of usa. you are able to make your thank you to Canada or Mexico first as a fashion to get to Cuba.

Answer 8

Canadians know all about the US and Canadian geography, but next to nothing else, so we're not much better.

Europeans know a lot more about world geography.

Answer 9

true, its not that hard to figure out were different countries are at even though we do have more education than most countries. yet we just seem to forget or just not care about the geography.

Answer 10

Do you now all of this from research or are you believing it blindly from something you read?

Yes - there are many here who are failed by our current educational system - but there are many others who are not ignorant about geography.

Thans for generalizing based on your own ignorance.