Geographical Ignorance

Media reports periodically highlight an appalling lack of public geographical knowledge, particularly in the United States. The National Geographic/Roper Public Affairs 2006 Geographic Literacy Study revealed that two thirds of Americans between 18 and 24 years of age were unable to find Iraq on a world map, almost half could not identify India, and three quarters could not locate Iran or Israel. Seventy-four percent of respondents selected English (rather than Mandarin Chinese) as the world's most widely spoken primary language. Knowledge of the United States itself was shown to be equally scanty, with fewer than half of the respondents able to identify the states of New York or Ohio. Perhaps most worrisome was the finding that most young Americans remained satisfied with their ignorance. Fewer than 30% of those surveyed thought it necessary to know the locations of countries figuring prominently in the news.

Bizarro

Source: “Bizarro” used with the permission of Dan Piraro and King Features Syndicated in conjunction with the Cartoonist Group. All rights reserved.

Previous National Geographic/Roper surveys revealed that the United States is particularly beset by geographical ignorance. In the 2002 effort, which examined Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, and the United States, young Americans came in second to last, beating only Mexican students. Respondents in all other countries surveyed more accurately estimated the population of the United States than did American students. Much evidence indicates, however, that geographical illiteracy is by no means limited to the United States. In an extensive 1995 survey based on sketch maps, Thomas Saarinen and Charles MacCabe found that American university students performed at [Page 1220]roughly the global average, trailing Europeans but outperforming many others.

Unfortunately, a disregard for essential geographical distinctions extends to the highest levels of the American body politic. In the 2008 presidential election, candidates from both major parties embarrassed themselves with serious geographical gaffes. The Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden erroneously alleged that the United States had expelled Hizbullah from Lebanon, while the Republican presidential candidate John McCain confused Sunni and Shi'ite Islam. More worrisome were accusations from campaign insiders that the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, could not name the three members of the North American Free Trade Agreement and was unaware that Africa is not a country. Although these assertions were challenged, public interviews revealed that Palin had a meager understanding of international relations and global conditions.

The current lack of concern for geographical knowledge in the United States represents a reversal from historical norms. Before World War II, secondary school students were expected to gain a close familiarity with the basic contours of the world map. To be sure, American isolationism and notions of national exceptionalism militated against the broad acquisition of global knowledge, but educated individuals—and certainly candidates for national office—were expected to be geographically literate.

Ironically, just as the United States found itself embroiled in global geopolitics in the post-World War II period, systematic geographical education was dismantled at the primary and secondary levels. Technological optimists naively assumed that advances in transportation and communication would erase the distinctions among different places, thus rendering geography irrelevant. At the same time, restlessly progressive educators concluded that geography was simply too stodgy and factually intensive. As a result, the subject yielded its place to an amalgam of history, sociology, and political science called social studies. In a 1993 study, J. Chiodo showed that most preservice social studies teachers in the United States lacked even a basic understanding of world geography.

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