<p>Although he’s not going to college, he is 18 years old and has never heard of South Dakota. Has American education really deteriorated to the point students (and even adults) don’t even know all 50 states??</p>
<p>I saw something recently about high school students who placed both Hawaii and Alaska off the coast of Mexico because that was the placement on weather maps. And then there was the story of the woman who had her car impounded when the state police thought her license plates were fake (Everybody knows there’s no such thing as WEST Virginia)</p>
<p>Doesn’t surprise me at all. I was at a class the other day and I was the only person who knew the Vice President of the United States. And I am not American. Of course when someone at the same class found out I was from England they asked me if I spoke ‘their language’. Tey were very surprised to learn that we speak English in England. Almost beats out the person a few years back who admired my accent then asked “does your mouth feel funny when you talk like that?” :rolleyes:</p>
<p>ellemenope & swimcatsmom, I could make a comment here but they’d boot this to the “political” forum…</p>
<p>When I was in school, 30 years ago, my teacher had a big argument with some students who were convinced that Canada was a state. So lack of knowledge about one’s own country is nothing new.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard about mail addressed to people in New Mexico that has been returned to it’s original sender because it lacks enough postage to go “international.”</p>
<p>I am not American (though I do live here) and I know all the States and approximately where most of them are located. How could he not know it is in the States. I remember my kids covering the States ant their Capitols in elementary school.</p>
<p>It’s amazing just how ignorant so many people are. A radio station here goes out and randomly asks people simple questions and plays back the responses (selectively edited for the most ignorant responses) and it’s pretty amazing that these are functional people who know so little. </p>
<p>You can hear the segments if you google ‘kogo radio’ and then go to ‘Features’ then ‘Chip’s Arrested Intelligence’ section. Today’s question was “How do you get into the electoral college?”.</p>
<p>I had a friend who had graduated from high school and was attending college. She thought Mexico was a state. She was a bit of a ditz, so we tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and gave her an excuse. We asked her if she was getting Mexico mixed up with New Mexico. Sadly, she wasn’t. She knew there was the state, New Mexico, but she was convinced there was also the state, Mexico. She was an art major and thankfully, for her, a very gift artist.</p>
<p>States and Capitals was a big test when my kids were in elementary school. I remember my son’s basketball coach telling the whole team to go home & study their states and capitals for the test. Our Monsignor from our church went to each class and taught the kids a song he learned when he was younger. You basically sing all the states to “Yankee Doodle” starting with Maine, going down the east coast and then back up and down, etc. To this day my son claims he “rules” in geography & states & capitals, and none of us have forgotten that song!</p>
<p>When I taught journalism at a 2nd tier public, I required my students to regularly read newspapers, and I also gave them current events quizzes that included map questions in which they had to identify countries in the news.</p>
<p>Students – including those with high grades – thought that Japan and China were Great Britain!</p>
<p>I didn’t bother quizzing them on states, but if I had, I’m sure that most of the students also wouldn’t have known the states.</p>
<p>On the last exam for my International Relations class–a class intended for people who are majoring in IR–we had to match the names of all the European countries to a numbered map. (Okay, not all of them: Scandinavia and the Baltic States were labeled as such, and Moldova, Lichtenstein, and the microstates were omitted.) When the tests were passed out, one girl had failed to get a single country correct.</p>
<p>Honestly, I was pretty sure everyone who could get into a top-100 school could point out FRANCE on a map, but evidently I stand corrected.</p>
<p>Our next test requires us to memorize the map of Asia (and our professor is an Asia specialist). I wonder how that will turn out.</p>
<p>Post #7 & #9 must have occurred decades ago prior to the creation of zip codes. Although, just to be safe, it might be best to carry your passport when traveling to New Mexico–oh, and don’t drink the water!</p>
<p>My sister-in-law was born in Washington, DC. On the passport application, it asked for city and state of birth. She filled it in with Washington as the city and District of Columbia as the “state.” When her passport came back, it stated that she had been born in Colombia! (Some of those students graduated and went to work for the Passport Office?)</p>
<p>A party game or ice breaker for adults is to break into teams of 4 or 5 and have each team draw a map of the U.S. First team that puts all 50 states on a piece of paper in about the right place wins. A surprising number of teams end up stalled, where not one person on the team can say where, say, Nebraska is.</p>
<p>I have Google Earth installed on several of my computers so that I can look up the city or town and maybe the geographical features on news stories. BTW, it helps to have 4 GB of RAM to run smoothly. I sometimes drag the kids over too. Our son had about 200K miles logged by the time he was 4 or 5 so he’s pretty good with places. Some of the online games that the kids play have other kids from around the world and they like to know the time zones of those kids to get an idea as to when they come online. So sometimes games are useful for learning where countries are located.</p>
<p>It does seem surprising at how little some of my fellow peers know about basic geography-we did all the states and capitals in fifth grade, and all the continents over the years. Last year (junior year), we actually had weekly map quizzes where we had to memorize all the countries, capital cities, other major cities, and major geological land forms in each continent. We ended the year with a world map quiz-anything was fair game-countries, capitals, other cities, etc. </p>
<p>For anyone who wants to encourage their kids (or friends, students, or yourselves) to improve their geography knowledge (and other stuff too, actually), I would recommend</p>
<p>For geography it’s divided into the US, Canada, Mexico, and the continents, and there is all sorts of difficulty levels and categories (countries, capitals, landscape). It’s a great way to waste an hour or two testing your knowledge!</p>