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Wherefore art thou, geography?
By Dana Goldstein - Nov 30th, 2006 at 9:57 am EST
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Half of Americans aged 18 to 24 can't locate New York on a map, and two-thirds can't locate Iraq. Forty-eight percent believe the majority of the population in India is Muslim. Read more shocking stats in the American University Eagle. And then go sign up for a human geography course.

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Heh...
By Superduperficial Nov 30th 2006 at 10:32 am EST
...if they don't want to take a look at a map, their choice. Are they missing out? Hard to say. Maps are easy enough to come by these days that if this (very basic) information was essential to their daily lives, they would know it by now.
  
Contrarian can be wrong
By Ben Adler Nov 30th 2006 at 11:42 am EST
SDF. Really. Sometimes you make really interesting points but this is just silly. Unless you're a total libertarian with no belief in public goods like education and total faith in the market, then surely you must realize that young people may be too lazy to learn these things for themselves but ought to be taught them. After all, we went to war in Iraq, ostensibly in response to an attack on New York. You don't think it matters in a democracy whether people know where these two places are? How can you appreciate the risk associated with turning Iraq over to Shiites who may be closely with Iran if you don't know that Iran and Iraq share a border?
Re: Contrarian can be wrong
By Superduperficial Dec 1st 2006 at 11:49 pm EST
""Unless you're a total libertarian with no belief in public goods like education and total faith in the market, then surely you must realize that young people may be too lazy to learn these things for themselves but ought to be taught them.""

No, I don't. There are plenty of kids in India and China who will be working damn hard to learn the things kids here might be too lazy to; we should simply make it easier for the world's best and brightest to come here. If our native-born would like to get with the program and start pushing themselves harder, they're more than welcome to, but there's no reason we should limit ourselves as a nation to the youth we were born with. (Pace Rumsfeld)

""You don't think it matters in a democracy whether people know where these two places are? How can you appreciate the risk associated with turning Iraq over to Shiites who may be closely with Iran if you don't know that Iran and Iraq share a border?""

If people want to vote without knowing those things, they'll get what they pay for in terms of the results.
  
To paraphrase Colin Powell
By August J. Pollak Nov 30th 2006 at 11:47 am EST
The reason so many Americans 18-24 can't find Iraq on a map is because the ones who can are busy being deployed there.
Re: To paraphrase Colin Powell
By Superduperficial Dec 1st 2006 at 11:49 pm EST
Good point... From what I read, the Army trends better-educated than the civilian average.
  
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