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Have someone take care of that, would ya?

I read Ms. Traister's post yesterday, and tried to respond, but I couldn't identify what bothered me most about the whole affair. I was not bothered by the girl's answer as much as I was bothered by the question. In most of the comments I heard, people assumed she was just another stupid teenager who doesn't know geography. The question was about education, not geography, and as you said, it's one that stumps even the experts.

And besides that, I've heard more garbled answers come out of our fearless leader's mouth. Why come down so hard on an 18 year old girl if we're not going to hold him to a higher standard. He's just lowering the bar for us all....

The statistic came from a question in which the people were told to label the U.S., and were given no credit if they forgot to mark Alaska and Hawaii as part of the U.S.

Ahem, Indonesia is actually to the south*east* of Singapore. For the most part. Part of Sumatra lies west of Singapore, but the vast bulk of the archipelago (by population, land area, and number of islands) is to the southeast. Not to malign Manjoo's geographical knowledge or anything.

First, Anon. Duh. Its been this way for a while. I don't mind it, why do you?

Second, sweet post. I remember that Natl. Geographic article, piece, whatever it was, about young Americans and their geography. They even had a "Take your own" quiz on the Middle East, and boy was I sweating that. But I did pretty well, only missed a few. UAE maybe. The thing is I didn't really know the countries exactly, but if you reckon that big peninsula is Saudi Arabia, and Iran borders Afghanistan, and Jordan is on the Med. Sea (because I surely can't spell that off the top of my head)....

Oh wait, Jordan doesn't border the Med. Sea. I must have missed that one too...

South Americans strongly object to calling the United States "America," on the grounds that the pair of continents constitutes "America," and the United States constitutes only a fraction of that landmass.

Was Ms. Upton being culturally sensitive with her choice of phrase, or just totally insane? Do South Americans call people from the United States, "U.S. Americans?"

So then, since we have spell-checkers, it doesn't matter whether kids know how to spell? And since we have dictionaries, it doesn't matter whether we remember what any words mean without having to look them up?

No, we don't use unlabeled maps in the real world, but asking kids to identify countries that way is a pretty good indicator of whether they've actually used a real map to locate countries before. And while it may not be necessary to know that Indonesia is an archipelago in Southeast Asia--or that Iraq borders Iran, for instance--it's a sign of a well educated person. Would you want to have a conversation with somebody who didn't know anything without having to look it up?

Knowing how to find things is an invaluable skill, but if you really consider it a substitute for knowing things, then you're ... well, not very smart.

The question states that 1 in 5 Americans, not young Americans, couldn't find our nation on a map. This may well have to do with internet savvy, especially among my peers. However, the survey fails to take into account older generations. I have a feeling the statistics would lean much closer to the ones in the question that the vapid, would-be beauty queen misheard.

Farhad offers:

Remember, people in the survey were trying to place countries on unlabeled maps.

So what!? Unlabeled maps have been part of every single TV news broadcast that has ever been put to air. I can invoke the visual for you with this simple auditory clue:

"And now to Susan with the weather...." And there she is standing in front of a huge unlabelled map.

For global unlabelled maps, see the "world weather" on CNN or the BBC.

But fortunately there's a much simpler and indeed far more rational reason why people all over the world get maps wrong. You can sum this reason up with one word:

Scale.

Maps are massively, vastly scaled. Similar to the a sizable majority of people who simply cannot "see" a 3D room from a 2D plan, a sizable minority of people simply cannot connect a map to anything real that they experience in the world.

The scale is simply too vast.

The skill of understanding maps can be taught even to those who don't naturally "get" it, but only if, like any other skill, someone wants to learn.

Dude, really...come on... if you call us people from the South of America South Americans, what do you suppose we call people from the North of America.

Yeah, that's right. We call you norteamericanos (North Americans, because you are from the North, you see?)

Was that so hard?

Geez.

Now, don't go calling us Colombia Americans, or Venezuela Americans, or Peru Americans, that would be quite embarrasing.

Maybe it's the lack of maps.

Here I thought you were going to say what was really wrong with the question: There is no context-appropriate answer.

Gee, let's think of some:

1. because the state of education in this country is crap

2. because teachers are underpaid and overworked

3. because teachers are underqualified

4. because the rich people send their children to private school, taking their time and resources away from the public ones

5. because we've abandoned poor districts, which will only be exacerbated by the recent supreme court decision regarding school diversity

6. because no child left behind sucks

7. because we're a culture that favors brawn and looks over brains, hailing beauty queens on prime time when we relegate the national spelling be to the look-at-the-freaky-kids late-night timeslot on the Ocho.

How would any have these have played well in a beauty contest? You can't speak truth to power when you're trying to get the power (and the network they broadcast on) to give you the crown.

I still think she was sloppy for not asking to have the question repeated if she didn't hear it the first time. But seriously, when you think about it, there was nothing she could say.