Why are we falling back in Geography?

I personally believe that….US Americans are unable to do so…...

because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps.

I could answer the way Ms. South Carolina did. The Iraq and the like need maps because they. Crap, I forgot her answer, but you can see it here. Honestly, I think our education system sucks, at least in my state, because we focus too much on standardized tests and statistics instead of true learning. Also, most students could care less about any type of information that they don’t feel is necessary. At least that is my experience as a teacher.

Wabarr, stop stealing Ms. South Carolina’s great answer!

Where is Paris?

Texas?

the iraq

us Americans.

south africa

In my old private school in Harlingen Texas, Marine Military Academy, my teacher Coach Rudnick was able to motivate the whole class to memorize every country and land formation in the Geography book. I was able to maintain a 100 average in the class for at least 10 -12 weeks.

I think it is a couple of factors. The first and foremost of these is our geocentrisim in the U.S. We basically have an attitude as a culture that the rest of the world is not as important as we are. That trickles into our education system resulting in an insufficient emphasis on geography and world history. We are the poorer for it, and I believe that some day it could redound to our detriment even more than it already has.

Because France and Mexico somtimes pull the ‘ole switch-a-roo and trade places for a couple of weeks? You know, just to mess with kids heads.

I can’t say it better than marina just did.

(although I can’t name all the states offhand, I can list the countries in south America and their capitals. Call me an outlier.)

In America we do not study geography. At all. I don’t think it’s even geocentrism as much as a total lack of study, because I doubt very much that most Americans could accurately locate even 25 of the 50 states. Okay 49. Hawaii is just too hard.

You would think that in such a diversified nation we would have a much better knowledge of geography but no….
So many different cultures and so many immigrants from various parts of the world and we have yet to dedicate at least a portion of our education to learning geography. But heaven forbid we don’t take home ec or auto shop in high school.

Because you’re American and you’re free to choose whether you want to look at a world map?

But seriously, my theory is that it’s related to the size of your own country. My home country is tiny (in fact it’s not even on all maps distributed in North America), the furthest you can ever be from the sea is 7km. So we learned our own geography in an afternoon and could then spend the rest of the time on Europe and the rest of the world.
You lot (Americans) have a fair bit to get through before you go beyond your own borders…..

yea basically what everyone else said. Between testing and not really giving a shit about the rest of the world, somehow we just manage to skip geography. I learned a little bit of geography in high school but it was the same map of Europe everyone else got. I guess learning about all the countries in Asia (particularly the middle east), Africa, South America, etc. weren’t all that important. But I learned plenty about France, Germany & England. Yay!

lol that video is hilarious… US Americans? wtf??!
anyways, when I was in junior high we had a geography class and we had to learn all 50 state, 13 colonies and their capitals, all European countries, and some of Asia and Africa. Personally, I haven’t met anyone that I know of who can’t find France on a map, thats just sad. America is full of itself.