Couldn’t Find Louisiana With Two Hands And A Map

One of my favorite, and yet most frustrating areas of concern with the citizenry is their lack of basic knowledge. Usually, my concern is the lack of historical awareness among the population. Going back to my high school days, though, has also been a pet peeve of mine regarding geographical awareness.

Studies going back for the past few decades have shown embarrassingly poor performance on the part of students in locating even the closest neighbors to the U.S., or our nation itself. These studies highlight to me a true dumbing down of the student body as other priorities displace such trivial concerns. My pet theory in this regard is that although we were in a downward trend, the creation, funding and intervention in local schools by the U.S. Department of Education in the 1970’s accelerated it to bullet train-like speed.

A recent AP story notes that a Roper Poll commissioned by National Geographic in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina coverage to determine if it had improved students’ awareness of where they were in the world. The most amusing or saddening numbers depending on how you look at it include:

One third of students couldn’t find Louisiana on a map.
48% could not find Mississippi (wonder how many could spell it)
60% could not find Iraq
47% could not find the Indian Subcontinent
75% had no idea where Israel was on a map of the Middle East
60% did not know the DMZ between North and South Korea is the most heavily fortified border in the world. 30% thought it was the U.S.-Mexico border (won’t that be a surprise to the thousands of illegals that cross daily!)

Naturally the article includes clarion calls for programs that will emphasize geography and energize schools and communities to learn the wonders of a map. I’m sure these campaigns will cost taxpayers nothing. Of course, several organizations are participating in this campaign and some might say that they will absorb the cost, but I would remind them that there’s a good chance many will use government grants to accomplish the task.

I see the National Council of La Raza is involved. Well, perhaps they’re just trying to clarify which of the U.S. states they want Mexico to have back (sorry, cheap shot).

Those things aside, including the tragic comedy that is the desire and ability of the modern student or worse young adult to exercise such basic geographic knowledge, it might help to look upon why schools neglect such teaching. Of course, I’m just pontificating here, but a good start might be if students actually got to deal with real knowledge instead of ridiculous feel-good programs. Multicultural awareness, sex education for grade-schoolers, and lengthy diatribes about the teacher’s political leanings could probably be set aside to find the minutest amount of time to discuss such mundane facts as the location of, say, China.

After all, if we’re going to be fighting them one day, we should know where they are. Perhaps while we’re educating 18 to 24 year olds on where Iraq is, we might also point out that it is just to the west of Iran or Persia (kind of like the old line, corn or as the Natives call it, maize…). Again, should we have to drop nuclear weapons on Iran after it lights up Europe or Israel, it’d be good to know for the students exactly where we have to target. Don’t want to have to wait until those missile techs in the Air Force get trained on how to use it to get a crash remedial course in target location.

We could even try cross-promoting with the Marxists and put pictures of Cuba on Che shirts. Maybe we could start a trend, putting North Korea’s outline on shirts of lil’ Kim (and I don’t mean the singer) or put a picture of India on all the shirts protesting out-sourcing. It’s crude, but I think it just might work.

And to top it all off, if you’re going to protest and you’re going to call Americans Imperialist aggressors, do us the small favor of knowing the location and perhaps some general knowledge about the area of the world you’re protesting about. And try not to get it from the latest episode of the West Wing (now cancelled) or Law & Order (any of them). They don’t always use real country names anyway (important safety tip).

It’s often said, the solution starts at home, so parents if you’re reading this please expose your kids to that quaint little invention called a globe. An atlas (modern or historical) might be another novel diversion for your little info sponge. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if you refreshed your memory on the current political borders as well. After all, things change but none so much or as often as borders.