![]() "We get caught in a rut where we're working so hard, we stop caring about the rest of the world," he says. In the United States and Mexico, only about 20 percent had traveled abroad during the same period, and the majority spoke only one language.Īndresen has his own theory about why Americans often take an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach to the world. In the 2002 survey, travel and language acquisition improved geographic knowledge: In the highest-scoring countries - Sweden, Germany and Italy - at least 70 percent of the young adults had traveled internationally in the previous three years, and at least 90 percent spoke more than one language. Unfortunately, they all get lumped under the vague heading "social studies," an area that loses out when forced to compete for precious class time with subjects measured by standardized tests. But geography, which straddles social and physical sciences, encompasses culture, environment, political issues, globalization, resource management and information systems. ![]() Surveys tend to focus on the ability to locate places on a map, as if that's what geography is, LeVasseur says. "No one was up there championing the cause." "To understand events in the world today is almost impossible unless you have a geographical perspective," she says. When the No Child Left Behind Act was expanded to include nine core disciplines, geography was the only one that wasn't funded for teacher training, she says. "We as a country don't place as much value on it," says Michal LeVasseur, executive director of the National Council for Geography Education. They were much more likely to know that the island featured in the reality show "Survivor" was in the South Pacific. ![]() Just 13 percent of young Americans could locate either Iraq or Iran. The United States was next to last.Īmerican involvement in other countries made little difference. Sweden was tops, and Mexico was at the bottom. The National Geographic-Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey polled more than 3,000 18- to 24-year-olds in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and the United States. Greater global awareness has become his mission and his business, inspired by a study that showed - among other appalling statistics - that 11 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 couldn't locate the United States on a map and nearly 30 percent couldn't find the Pacific Ocean. "Then I asked them, 'Do you care?' And I found out that a lot of people weren't happy about it."Īndresen's not happy about it, either. "I went out and gave a simple geography quiz to 400 people on the streets of Atlanta, and they all realized they were pretty bad at it," Andresen says. More people can locate Iraq on a map these days, Klein says, but they don't know diddly about its people and culture.Įnter Roger Andresen, who ditched his job as a fiber-optic engineer three years ago to wage a one-man campaign against America's geographical cluelessness. What Americans are learning from other places - places like Iraq, Iran and Israel - is how little they know about what's happening in the world and how important it is to know more. "Sometimes Americans don't think they can learn from other places." "It's isolationism of the mind," says Phil Klein, associate geography professor at the University of Northern Colorado. Where in the world are Americans when it comes to knowing where in the world everybody else is?
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