American high-schoolers tend to fare poorly when faced with geography questions, and the nation's geography teachers want to do something about it:
A Roper poll commissioned by the National Geographic Society several years ago found that just 13 percent of Americans between the age of 18 and 24, or one in seven, could find Iraq on a map, and 83 percent could not locate Afghanistan...As a result of this survey and similar reports, nonprofit organizations have taken up the cause of trying to improve Americans' awareness of geography and its importance; those people most concerned include some of the country's dedicated teachers... Ms. Bednarz sees an improvement in younger students' awareness but remains concerned, she says, "about general public ignorance." Being able to name, spell and locate places correctly, she says, is only a small part of the field of geography that often gets filed away in school curricula under a social studies label. Context and connections are geography's meat and potatoes. Geographers pride themselves on being connectors whose major task is studying relationships between people and places......[Ms. Bednarz] admits it was discouraging to find that only 20 percent of her college geography class last semester could find Thailand on a map or locate the site of the earthquake that triggered the tsunami.
(Via the Gadfly.)
Posted by kswygert at March 28, 2005 11:08 AM