Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

OK, we all know that Americans have no idea of world geography. Or is that just a disgraceful unwarranted stereotype just like "bad English teeth".

So here is a post off a friend's Facebook page. She was watching Sound of Music and posted this little gem.

"BTW, did you know that Austria does NOT border Switzerland? Hollywood took some liberties on European geography..."

And this is an educated lady with a high flying job and a masters degree. She even worked in Switzerland for three years.

Oh dear !!!!

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

The best one that I ever came across was a young lady (in college) that told me I spoke English very well and by the way what language do you speak in England?! If it hadn't been said to me personally, I would never in a million years have believed it. Incredible!

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

I've tested Co-workers before with a map, and they were no better at locating random countries I asked for. Most could not point out all the provinces in Canada.

This is in Canada.

Geography isn't every ones things, some are better then others, regardless of where you are.

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

I have been asked that a million times.
I love it when everyone says England is "Down there " I never knew England was such a geographical oddity

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No, it isnt a stereotype. The average person over here has very little grasp of geography compared to the average European. Last year my gf and I went on holiday to Tunisia, and her friend who is in the midst of her phd at a rather large college over here said 'whats Tunisia?'. I'm sick of everyone saying 'well it just depends on the person' and 'you get people like that everywhere'..ok, well it must be a conincidence then that only in the past year (since I moved to the US) have I met people with such breathtaking ignorance of the world outside!

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

Does anybody know which beach is closest to the ocean??
:confused:


:lol:

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What can you expect with the rubbish education system - no child left behind - what a bloody joke that is, and the appalling media?

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

But what about those bad teeth? :ohmy:

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

I'd bet you'd have just as many Brits that wouldn't be able to name and locate all 50 states here in the US! :D Now hopefully my fellow Americans would be able to do that (but I won't hold my breath too long).

We all know why Americans don't do geography. It's because the vast majority will never need to know since they won't leave the border. :)

Now, to prove that USCs have the worst grasp of geography, we would need to do lots of random sampling of folks from many different countries, and compare the results. I'm not entirely convinced that we are the only people who wouldn't be able to name countries on a map.

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

Are you absolutely sure that the average American on the street.....taken at random......has ever been told at any time that there actually IS an "outside world"? :confused: I read in a British newspaper that 27% of Americans have never travelled any further than their immediate neighbourhood, and an even larger %age have never been outside of their own home state and that the USA has the smallest %age of citizens holding a passport than any other western country. My brain tells me from reading all this that the Americans must be the most parochial as well - certainly when compared with us Europeans.

My mate works as a tourist guide up at Edinburgh castle and he confirms that the Americans ask the most stupid and idiotic questions of any other nationality and say the dumbest things - like one American lady standing at the ramparts of the Castle wondering why she couldn't see the Eiffel Tower from up there. Maybe she had some mental confusion condition but it just reflects what I say by and large. She was overheard by a German guy who then laughingly told my mate that when he was in Bavaria on a vist to the ancient huge turreted and towered castle of the Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria he had overheard an American guy ask a guide there if it had been modelled on the castle at Disneyworld or Disneyland or whatever that place in Florida is called.

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I know a guy who lives in a small town in Wisconsin, exactly 2 hours north of Chicago. He's 26 and has never been to Chicago.

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I am a Brit and I can get lost in a supermarket! But I can name the 50 States and US Capitals... Ask me where North is and I couldn't tell ya!:rofl:

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There was a kid at my school who had never left our county !
The nurse wouldn't ell me who it was but she said he/She was really exited for this field trip because that person had never left Erie County :lol:

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

I've had a passport for US 29 years so I CAN say from experience that until June of this year you didn't need a passport to go to Canada, to go to Mexico or to go to the Caribbean. Now granted that's not a large section of the world overall, but it IS traveling outside US borders.......... Considering that it takes as long and more to fly to Hawaii then to Europe or Alaska. It's a BIG country, for crying out loud. How many folks in Oz have gone to all of the states in Oz? I've stood in a place, Drei Punt ( I believe it's called) where I could touch, Belguim, the Netherlands and Germany at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I believe travel is broadening, educational and all that good stuff, it's my job for crying out loud, but I'll be damned if I'm going to take this one lying down. :sneaky:


As for the stupid comments, indeed, my first trip to the UK 25 years ago, our tour guide said that he had a person in a previous tour group ask why the Queen had built Windsor Castle so close to the flightpath at LHR. He said "I won't tell you the nationality of this lady, but..........and he winked." :blink:

and Hmmph you don't know what THAT place in Fl is called! You're letting down the home team.......;)

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"Americans are far from alone in the world, but from the perspective of many young Americans, we might as well be. Most young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 demonstrate a limited understanding of the world beyond their country’s borders, and they place insufficient importance
on the basic geographic skills that might enhance their knowledge."

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ro...gLitsurvey.pdf

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

it's all this twittering and whittering and texting and socialism.

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

While I don't necessarily agree with it, I can understand why a lot of people in the US have a limited understanding of world geography... The US is so huge that most people will not be able to see everything in the country in their lifetime, so why bother with what's outside of the country?

I know people (adults even) who have never even found cause to leave their home state let alone travel outside of the country.

One other suggestion may be that the US is very isolated geographically with regards to the rest of the world (You can position a globe with the only land mass on one entire side being the Americas)... Counter that with the fact that Britain is right on the edge of Europe and has a strong tie to a lot of countries around the world (mainly due to the European expansionism of the 18th and 19th century).

It may be suggested that British people have a higher than normal understanding of world geography due to the history of the country, where as the USA, which also spent a lot of its early history politically isolated from the rest of the world, does not have that background.

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

What bothers me about the American attitude toward geography (and foreign cultures for that matter) is not so much the ignorance ... we are all ignorant until we learn. What irritates me (about some Americans) is the overwhelming need to yap on WITH AUTHORITY about something that they obviously have no working knowledge of whatsoever. :frown:

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

In other words its a valid academic study but puts America in a bad light. ;)

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Well we have that as well....but it's mainly confined to retired coppers.

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

Well there is that isn't there. :ohmy:

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, ;)

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I was talking to one of my employees today about the desire of moving back to Oregon (from New York), his answer was 'at least it's closer to the UK.....'
:eek:
:frown:
:rofl:

.....yeah if you ignore the Pacific, Asia, Russia and the rest of Europe!

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think of it as "the scenic route."

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Maybe he thinks the planes can only fly one direction around the globe. :)

New York! What do you expect! :lol:
Hurry up, before Oregon closes for good.

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I don't know the answer to this, but is the flight over the pole, shorter than the "round the landfalls" flight across the Atlantic.

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I shouldn't have laughed.. my first trip over to Greece was last minute & the 'best' flight I found was PDX-->LAX-->London, talk about all around and about!
LA to London was 13 hours direct. I wasn't pleased to see we were practically retracing PDX-->LAX just to get started.

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

I had a good one myself a few years back... My flight from Rochester, NY to Manchester, UK went as follows:

ROC -> BOS -> TOR -> MAN

Yep, I went from Rochester to Toronto via BOSTON... I literally flew over Rochester airport on the second leg of the flight. The reason for it, as I recall, was no direct flight from ROC to TOR at that time and the train schedule not working out for my flights. :)

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

weatherwise, possibly?

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She Shoots! She SCORES!!!!!! Nice move! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

Good save, bunny! USA: 1 :lol:

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

OK....Brits have a very high passport holdership - a link on the web puts it at 81% of adults over 18 - that's more than I thought, but as a UK citizen needs a passport to leave his/her country for any reason (even to just hop over from Dover to Calais, buy a case of cheap wine and then catch the next ferrry back again) and you definitely have to show your passport to immigration at the UK Border control every time you come back home again. All other EU member states don't have thi requirement. When you arrive in another EU country from the UK you generally don't need to show your passport, but you must cerrtainly do so when coming back home to the UK again as I say.

Plus the fact we Brits are so much nearer to "everywhere else" than is the United States of America - not only Continental Europe (parts of which you can actually see from the Kent bit of the coast of SE England anyway) but also Africa (just a stone's throw from Gibraltar) and Asia (just a hop, skip and a jump from SE Europe).

Going from the USA to Canada isn't much of a big deal anyway is it? They all seem to speak with a similar accent in a language which is the same, too....and the cultures are more or less identical in many ways....discounting Quebec.

The Caribbean - a lot of that is English speaking.

OK - Mexico is different - but there again Spanish is the only non-domestic, non US based language involved in an international journey from the USA, and from Mexico down again Spanish is the "lingua franca) - apart from Brazil.

I have used our local Edinburgh airport to fly to Amsterdam and Malaga, but have used Heathrow several times to fly to other places on the Continent. Coming back over London before descending towards LHR is always a great sight and each time I did it it was daylight with clear fine weather, as in this YT clip - filmed incidentally by an American guy from California who appears to be an ardent Anglophile who never wants to leave England even when he has to return home - he can now recognise Craven Cottage footie ground from the air - home to Fulham FC - on the banks of the Thames opposite Putney....clearly visible in this clip, along with many other familar landmarks. To me seeing London like this from the air is one of the greatest of sights after a trip abroad. From the air the UK looks greener and more orderly and neat than any other country I've flown over - even France just 21 miles away across a channel which looks not much wider than the Forth Estuary just a stone's throw from where I am right now.

I suppose the sheer physical size of the USA and it's comparatively very isolated position location wise, and the apparent belief of many of its people that there is very little if anything of any consequence or importance outside of their country, all goes to make them appear as "ignorant" as they do to many of us elsewhere on the planet. They really do come across as a wee bit of a race apart in many ways - maybe that's all a cultural thing which is all linked to what we've been talking about anyway maybe.

Arriving back home again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zobqleb8yU

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

Us Togoan are even more stupid... I have to use paper maps as GPS units baffle me ...

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Hope this clip plays, can't access youtube at work to check it out. Basically CNN asking Americans to name a country begining with the letter U. USA anyone???

www.youtube.com/watch?v=opwFjGYaV2A

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

Well, even I knew that CNNN probably isn't *the* CNN. :rolleyes:

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Yeah but could you find it on a map?

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

Yes, look under 'T'. :)

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

I don't normally like to join in these kind of threads, but just in case surly happens to drop by, and because I thought it was funny:

my Mrs is doing teacher training and as part of the course she's been sitting in on some lessons at the local high school. Today she sat in on a 10th grade business class. They had been asked to get to know powerpoint by producing a presentation on a given subject. One group had the subject "European Cities": Slide one was Paris, with a big picture of the Eiffel Tower and some facts about population, etc. Slide two was London, with the same sort of facts, and a big picture which they proudly announced was the Houses of Parliament. Except it was this building:

http://www.budapesthotelstart.com/bu...parliament.jpg

That's the parliament building in Budapest, Hungary. When my Mrs pointed out that it definitely wasn't the parliament in London, the students were adamant it was (even after finding out my Mrs had lived in London and been inside the real thing), since it had come up in a google image search for "parliament". So she whipped out ther iphone to demonstrate that they had skipped past several dozen images of the London HoP and chosen the Budapest one because it apparently "looked cooler".

Just for balance here and to prove that not all British people are goeography whizzes, when I lived in Bristol I had a mate whose girlfriend (another teacher) was equally adamant that Wales was an island.

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

Of course it is - you have to go over a bridge to get there, duh. :p

Re: Geography knowledge- stereotype
 

The US (all of North America for that matter) is not exactly close to the rest of the world. There really is no cheap way to see the world from NA and for a family flying to Europe or elsewhere is likely cost prohibitive for the average family.

Less vacation in general and even when offered many don't take it, and that makes short weekend trips to nearby states more likely.

I grew up in California and we took a 2 week vacation by car every year, but we never left the western US, and I still have only seen a fraction of it.

Up until recently in the past few years there was no need for a passport to travel to most of the Caribbean, Mexico and Canada so why get one unless you plan to go elsewhere.

The US is huge, if in California Europe isn't exactly close, and Australia is even further, Asia not doing much better.

There are very valid reasons why so few have passports.

I enjoy other cultures and visiting other countries, but heck I'd like to see more of my country first. So much to see, not enough time.