One of our assignments in AP European History was to be able to identify pretty much every Eurasian country west of Russia on a blank map.
I have not retained this knowledge. I’d like to say it was in favor of more immediately useful information, but truth be told I’ve spent the morning boggling over the personal revelation that a straw is just a long donut, so…
Ok, USians, so where in UK is Kircudbrightshire? (It’s a county.)
TBH most Brits would probably fail, too. 
whoa whoa whoa! I thought they hated us for our freedom.
We are not the worst, but second worst among nine major countries:
It seems to me that people who opt not to enlighten themselves with the tools available to them would be more akin to ‘idiots.’
My Gram always had a dictionary, a thesaurus and a world atlas in her home when I was growing up; so unsurprisingly, that’s also what’s in my home as an adult today (plus an old fashioned looking globe or two.)
well that’s a bit unfair – i wouldn’t ask people in the UK to find certain counties in the US. i mean states are one thing, but counties? i suppose you could argue there’s some level of equivalency, i guess, but putting Kircudbrightshire county on the same playing field as, i don’t know, Wyoming …seems a bit much.
Right, I remember visiting both Canada and Mexico as a teen without needing a passport.
Yeah, there are probably a lot more people in Kircudbrightshire.
A map with labels would be testing literacy not geography.
Just did a search on articles with poll in the title on Boing Boing.
Y’all must be pretty lazy.
Because before then those of us who lived near the border could walk/drive across with just a drivers license/state ID.
Now you need a passport or enhanced ID (which is a drivers license+passport card) to do that.
OK, point taken.
There are almost 200 countries in the world…how many do i need to be able to recognize on an unlabeled map before i am not an idiot?
And how is this information useful to me in the modern world?
Well, it’s not like we’re asking people in the US to name arrondissements in France, or federal states in Germany, federal districts in Russia or even Canadian provinces or territories. So why should anyone in else know about US states?
Iran, is a sovereign state with a rich cultural history of that goes back almost three millennia. Is it too much to ask for have a clue about its location after the orange creep has kept it in US news for months now?
These countries are all a part of the modern world. The fact that the modern world requires more global perspective is something we might take as one of the defining themes of modernity. It may require some effort to know them all but you should try, and join me in feeling a bit of ‘oh shucks, I should have gotten that’ when we mislocate some. Do not abdicate the responsibility of participating in a global discourse.
I might also want you to know the difference between a Safavid and a Abassid to not be an idiot, but I’ll admit this may be a stretch. The current countries is a great start.
i’m not asking anyone to. i’m just saying that people everywhere can be geographically clueless, but that it’s probably more likely that someone from europe can point out California than someone from the US can point out a county in the UK.
Sorry jab, I did not mean to insinuate you were an idiot. My sincere apologies.
I do however think that people advocating war with a nation with one of the world’s largest standing armies should know where it is.
I have found that most Americans that are pro the endless war on terror have no idea where Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Syria are.
Admittedly, I would misplace many nations.
I like to run through this quizz to brush up and at least feel Iike I have the moral high ground.
This is all true - people who don’t even have a vague notion of where it is probably don’t know anything about it or the relevant history. However, these “Americans can’t find X on a map” articles are still bullshit because they rely on surveys that were clearly taken by significant numbers of trollies. A large number of respondents end up placing “Iran” in the US, in the ocean, etc.; it’s impossible to know how many of the simply “wrong” answers are also driving trollies. The whole basis for the article is fatally flawed.
No, they’re clearly driving trollies. Which makes other wrong answers suspect as well. I suspect some people don’t know exactly where Iran is, so go for an obviously wrong answer as a perverse way of saving face.
But it is also that they don’t care. Friends from Europe, after living here in the US for a while were shocked by the lack of international news. They said it was as if Americans didn’t consider themselves part of the world. It’s true, we don’t, really.
To be fair, Americans aren’t great at knowing where particular states are*. And there’s no reason for a foreigner to know US geography - it’s not like the relative location of any US state really has any impact on international events. (Not to mention Americans know nothing about the countries in the UK, much less having any idea what a “Sussex” is, for example. Americans would probably identify it as a country in Eastern Europe.)
*My favorite bit in the article linked by @dazz there:
Fewer than 50 percent of those polled in the [international] survey could identify the U.S. states of New York or Ohio on a map.
…
Fewer than 50 percent of those polled in the [US] survey could identify the U.S. states of New York or Ohio on a map.
Which is the problem - the rest of the world knows as much about the US as the US does, but the US knows nothing about them.
More possible causes of the Arkansas/Greenland/Ocean guesses:
There also seem to be a lot of guesses in Italy. Were people skimming the question so fast that they only noticed the first letter of the country’s name? That’s not the best way to go through life, but skimming some random online poll doesn’t mean you skim everything you come across. So, there’s not much we can learn from this one poll.
No Problem, i have been called an idiot many a times…its all good. 
I do not fall in that camp.
“Have no idea” is different from “can recognize it by shape on an unlabeled map”. that was the point i was trying to make. I know it is in the middle east, and i can easily locate the middle east on an unlabeled map. but do i know every country by shape; no. And a continent like Africa would be even harder for me to name the countries.
“To know them” in my opinion goes beyond being able to locate them on a map. What type of government do they have, why are we at war with them, what is their population like, etc…seems to be more important than memorizing info that i can easily find any map that is halfway decent. I can have an intelligent and knowledgeable conversation about Iran if I know about its history, culture and politics even if i can’t find it on the map.
Your states = subdivision of country
Our counties = subdivision of country
Your counties = more like UK local authority/council areas.
There are fewer (Doh! Quite a lot more) UK counties than US states.
Equivalence is still fair, I feel.
ETA accuracy
