Knight Rider Movie

I won’t say that I flat out run Hollywood, but let’s just say that when I talk, they listen.

You’re welcome.

Don’t Know Much About Geography…

Jeff showed me this article today that highlights how ignorant recent U.S. high school graduates are when it comes to world geography.    Among the highlights, or rather lowlights, of the study.

• 33% of respondents couldn’t pick out Louisiana on a map.
• 63% couldn’t find Iraq
• 75% couldn’t find Israel
• 30% thought the most heavily fortified border was between United States and Mexico

That last one is my favorite.  I can only assume that these geniuses are bad at English too, and thought “fortified” meant “easily crossed with a thousand dollars, a cousin in El Paso, and the ability to stuff yourself into a shipping container for two days.”

So the results are terrible, right?  These kids are stupid, right?  Well… yeah.  These kids are stupid.  All you need to know about the American education system is summarized in that first bullet point.  One out of every three kids that graduated from a U.S. high school in the past six years has no idea where Louisiana is.  Awesome.  So much for no child left behind.

But are you any better at geography?  Well, you could at least find Louisiana, right?  But what about Afghanistan?  88% of these Mensas couldn’t find it.  Could you? 

I was pretty sure that I could, but I wasn’t positive.  To test it out, I did a Google search for “Geography quiz” and found this cool site.  I took every test they offered.   

Here’s how it works.  On each map, there is one question for each place you need to identify.  You get 3 chances to get each one right.  Each place is worth a max of 3 points, but you lose a point each time you guess wrong.  So your max possible score is equal to 3x the number of questions/places.  Make sense?

Here are my results, from best to worst.

Update: I took the table out because I think all of the HTML is pissing off my web server. :(  Here are my scores in a simple list.

World - 94%
USA - 91%
Central America - 88%
Australia - 79%
Europe - 68%
Asia - 67%
S. America - 67%
Caribbean - 61%
Canada - 56%
Oceania - 45%
Africa - 41%
China - 27%
Mexico - 23%
Average - 63%

Some of my lowlights…

• I got the 94% on the Earth test, the easiest one, because I couldn’t figure out where they wanted me to click for the Arctic Ocean.  I knew where it was.  Seriously, I did.
• That’s more than I could say for Delaware.  I honestly didn’t know where it was on the US map, other than “somewhere in New England“.  I kept clicking around Rhode Island.  Turns out Delaware is cozy with Maryland.
• The rest of my 9% failure on the US test was for missing a few times because I mixed up the placement of adjacent states (Vermont vs. New Hampshire, Kansas vs. Nebraska, etc.)
• I had no idea I knew as much as I did about Central America.  That will come in handy should I ever decide to retire from computers, move south, and become an evil dictator or drug lord.
• The Australia one is inflated because of the 3 strikes thing.  I didn’t know any of the answers, but it’s easy to figure out by trial and error.
• I was proud that I did so well in the Middle East.  I actually took the time to familiarize myself with the map over there a few years ago.  I figured it would help the news make a little more sense to me.
• I thought I’d do better in Europe.  All those freakin’ break-away Soviet republics tripped me up. 
• All of the rest I had a pretty hard time with.  I’m pretty embarassed about how bad I did in South America and Canada, but nothing is worse than my Africa score.  I took a class at UNC where I had to know all of the African countries and their capitals.  I aced it.  It would seem that I didn’t retain much of it. 

Anyway, I thought this was a pretty neat little exercise.  A 63% average is far from great.  In fact, it sucks.  That’s a D.  But I still bet it’s higher than what 95% of Americans would score.  Not you blizzog readers of course.  You guys are much smarter than the average bear.

To me, this national study and the results of my own test just highlight how little we Americans could give a shit about the rest of the world, and probably speaks to why most of the rest of the world can’t stand us.  We’re like the boss that everyone hates because he barely remembers your name or what you do, but he writes your paycheck so you have to put up with him.

If you take the tests, post your scores so we can laugh at you, or laugh at me, or laugh at both of us.  Whatever.  In the meantime I’ll be over here forgetting where Delaware is again.