The majority of Americans don’t know where Israel is located
Many people living in developed countries, and in the USA first of all, don’t know geography, and just a few of them know where Iraq, Iran, Israel, or Afghanistan are located, although much is published about these countries of late. This is the conclusion of research conducted by the US National Geographic Society in nine countries. Only 13% of young Americans subject to the draft could point to Iraq on a map (and this is at a time when the White House plans to start a war campaign), and 83% of Americans failed indentify the location of Afghanistan, where the US-led campaign has been carried out since October 2001.
Americans didn’t have any better luck pointing to the locations of Israel or Iran on a map. Three out of ten people questioned failed to find the Pacific Ocean, which covers 33% of the planet’s surface and straddles the US’s West Coast. It is astonishing, but only 89% of Americans even know where their country is located. The majority of the Americans questions did, however, manage to point to two American states: California and Texas. Here’s the kicker: those questioned had no problem answering where the popular TV show Survivor is taking place. It was also funny to know that many Americans think that one billion people live in the USA (in fact, the US population makes up only 281 million). On the whole, as the research in the nine countries has demonstrated, only Mexicans know geography worse than Americans. The Swedes demonstrated the best knowledge of geography: on average, they gave correct answers to 40 of the total number of 56 questions. Germans and Italians follow them with 38 correct. Everywhere, the research revealed that men are better at geography than women, with the exception of France only. French women turned out to be the only women who answered more questions correctly than their male countrymen.
The that Americans don’t know the geographical location of Israel isn’t so awful as the fact that some Americans don’t know Canada’s location, which sounds like complete nonsense. You don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
Dmitry Chirkin
PRAVDA.Ru
Translated by Maria Gousseva
Read the original in Russian: http://world.pravda.ru/world/2002/5/16/43/3295_USA.html
Related links:
PRAVDA.Ru Pentagon’s geography : Indonesia comes next
PRAVDA.Ru Attacking Iraq Would Be Bad For America
Survey: Young Lack Geography Skills
National Geographic : U.S. Students Improving in Geography, Study Finds
PRAVDA.Ru Iraqi War : Price of the Problem
Iraqi-Americans Fear War Inevitable
Discuss this article with others on Pravda.ru forum
Iran to Enrich Uranium Despite Global Opposition
Forum
STATISTICS
Source: 
