doodledee

Another one of those reports about how Americans are sucky at geography is out. It seems like they publish one of these every year. And yet people somehow are always astonished that their fellow citizens can't find anything besides their home state on a world map.

Being somewhat cynical, I guess I don't expect that many people to know where crazy places like Afghanistan are. (Somewhere over by France, maybe?) There are just too many little countries to keep track of and they change around too fast. Yesterday's Czechoslovakia is today's Czech Republic and Slovakia. Yesterday's Yugoslavia is today's Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and [maybe] Macedonia. Yesterday's Mexico is today's New Mexico. Honestly, who can keep track of all that? Test giving geography nerds, that's who.

That said, even I was shocked by this one:

Only 71 percent of the surveyed Americans could locate on the map the Pacific Ocean, the world's largest body of water. Worldwide, three in 10 of those surveyed could not correctly locate the Pacific Ocean.

How is that even possible? The Pacific Ocean covers like 1/3 of the entire world, more than all the land areas put together. Assuming the person knows that 'ocean' is not 'land', all they have to do is pick a section of water and point to it and they're gonna be right about half the time.

In conclusion, the people who can't find the Pacific Ocean on a map are actually more unlucky than they are stupid. Let's cut them some slack, people.