WASHINGTON,
November 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Although U.S. youth
may soon attack Iraq, most of them can’t even find that country on a
map, and they still lag behind their European, Asian and Canadian
counterparts when it comes to knowledge, interest and awareness of
geography and current events, the National Geographic Society said
Wednesday, November 20.
Among
the noteworthy results of the survey was the inability of 87 per cent of
Americans between the ages of 18-24 to pinpoint Iraq on a map, despite
the daily media blitz about the possibility of war there, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Afghanistan
didn’t fare much better, with only 17% of them successfully locating
the war-riddled country on a map.
This
was not entirely a U.S. phenomenon as young adults across the board had
a hard time locating Israel. On average, fewer than one fourth of
respondents could locate it, including only 14% of Americans.
The
National Geographic survey follows up on a ground-breaking 1988 study,
which found a poor level of geographic knowledge among Americans in
general and young Americans in particular.
This
year’s survey assessed the geographic literacy of some 3,000 young
adults between the ages of 18 to 24 in nine countries: the United
States, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Great Britain
and Japan.
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U.S.
youth… global goofs
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Current
events and map-reading skills were weak in the United States but only
slightly better elsewhere, with Sweden, Germany, France and Italy
standing out due to more rounded media use and more frequent travel than
American youth.
Young
adults across the board showed a limited knowledge of geography in the
context of nuclear issues, the survey said, with only a quarter of young
adults surveyed capable of naming at least four countries that
officially acknowledge having nuclear weapons.
While
the majority of young Americans (58%) knew the Taliban and al-Qaeda are
based in Afghanistan, they were least likely of all young adults to
answer the question correctly.
Again,
youths in the United States showed relatively little ability to find
places on maps of Europe, with the average young American able to locate
three out of 12 European countries, the survey said.
Since
1988 there has been a 10-percent drop in the importance Americans give
to knowing where a country is located and a substantial drop on how
important map reading should be (74% to 43%).
Close
to 30 percent of young adults worldwide could not locate the Pacific
Ocean, which immerses a third of the globe.
In
contrast, 34% of young Americans knew that the last season of the hit
television show “Survivor” was filmed on an island in the South
Pacific.
On
a positive note was the significant increase of the proportion of young
Americans who reported to have taken a geography course – 55% versus
30% in 1988 - and the fact that Americans seemed more geographically
literate on nearby current events.
However,
when asked to find 10 specific states on a map of the United States,
only California and Texas could be located by a large majority of those
surveyed. Both states were correctly located by 89% of the participants.
Only 51% could find New York, the nation’s third most populous state,
CNN said.
On
a world map, Americans could find on average only seven of 16 countries
in the quiz. Only 89% of the Americans surveyed could find their own
country on the map.
