People from the USA fail at geography

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barginbinbey

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im not entirely sure people know what 'south' means

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Haha i mean, in order to understand that a place connotes to another place, they would first have to know what the first place is called? No one is going to know it’s South Carolina or South Sudan unless you know that the place to the north is North Carolina or Sudan?

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summerswings Expand

I SO want to visit South Africa some day <3

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phililen3 Expand

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Geography is my fav subject, but it was never really taught in the US so I kind of learned it on my own. I can't name all the countries in the world but I can at least place them by continent.

Sis I grew up in New Beford and was taught geography, coloring in all the maps n shit

New Bedford is like Little Portugal, I'm not shocked geography was taught there. I grew up in Central MA and don't remember learning it, I was in ESL for two years tho before being placed in regular American classes, maybe it was around there that it was taught like (4-5th grade).

Edited at 2018-07-14 06:17 pm (UTC)

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Honestly same, we were just never taught the world map at geography at school, so I had to make the effort to teach myself through the internet because I was so embarrassingly ignorant at recognising other countries. This was the UK for me, but we literally never once studied a map of the world (or even one of the UK), geography was always more about discussing volcanoes, earthquakes etc, but I feel like it would have been helpful to study a world map occasionally too

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My highschool had two choices for your junior year, world history or world geography. A lot of people took geography because it was supposedly easier. It's more about actually paying attention and retaining what you are taught. I wonder how many of the kids who took world geography remember this stuff some 20 years later...

Geography has always been my favorite, and what I excel in. I could probably name 90% of the countries. I took an African Studies class about 10 years ago and had to memorize the countries and capitols of Africa so that helped a lot. Eastern Europe/West Asia might get a bit fishy though.

Download the World Map Quiz app! It's addicting af and after like a week of playing it, I could name pretty much all the countries they threw at me

I went to school in Virginia and we had to learn basic geography, particularly Europe.

I never liked geography at school because it involved a lot of statistics, studying population, etc, but as an adult I like trying to know all the countries, if nothing else just for fun (since I can't really afford to travel).

My boss always does geography quizzes at work when it's a slow day.

I think it must depend on what school you went to. I had Geography in 7th grade and World Geography in 9th grade for a whole year, it was my favorite class. We didn't just look at maps, we had to write essays about gross domestic products, importing, exporting and cultural issues for countries all over the world, so you learned about those places, not just how to find them on a map.

Haha, my teacher made use memorize countries in 8th grade, so I knew them then, but it's not something I've kept up with and definitely couldn't name most of them now

I went to an LAUSD 'magnet' school. No one EVER taught me geography.

6th grade - ancient mena history
7th grade - greece/rome history
8th grade - us history
9th grade - ??? i'm sure i had history but it's a complete blank
10th grade - "world" history...we studied the fur trapping trade between canada and the usa and touched on ww2
11th grade - us history [ap]
12th grade - no history class

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Americans don't know any other country apart from theirs?! Quelle surprise! What's up with your educational system, America?

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12dozenroses

hdu the us exists in the planet alone surrounded by nothing

that country so greedy it even took the name of a continent all to itself

by the way, i was expecting the kid to point to canada and say "canada, where i'm from"

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12dozenroses

The politicians love a stupid electorate so they keep taking away school funding.

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It’s absolute utter trash

Lol most ppl here cant even locate all 50 states correctly let alone other countries

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Ifkr

IDK what ages people are in this video, but my theory is, education is designed with budgetary and political/social concerns in mind, right? Ignoring the budget factor for a bit, in terms of political/social, why would a country that sees itself as the top of the world bother learning about the rest of the world, when the rest of the world should be learning about them? If these people were in elementary school in the 90s, the last time America looked really good to the rest of the world, then it makes sense to me that world geography wasn't emphasized at all.

The Philippines was/is very dependent on US aid and In my local Filipino school, we learned about the US and each state, along with every other rich western country. It's probably no coincidence that the US and Europe were emphasized more than the rest of the world (if Duterte has his way, Filipino school children will now learn Chinese geography). So it stands to reason that it's the same for the American school system, except it's the opposite.

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They didn’t even know where our country was LOL

the education system here is so trash especially when it comes to history. Geography wasn't even a required class for me during high school, it was an elective. I actually think by the end of my senior yr it was being said they were going to remove it entirely or merge it with another class (world studies, I think), because so few people picked it for an elective.

my parents were always shocked when I would tell them what we would learn in our history classes because when they were in school in Dominican Republic they said they covered lots of the world's history. Meanwhile for Global History and World History we'd only learn of important parts of history that the US was part of lmao.

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I don't think it's really the school system . My German geography class didn't teach world geography either . It was how are maps made ,mountains , river formations , agriculture, subsistence farming, human development , savannah vs deserts vs rainforests, climates ... This kind of stuff. I think the rest of the world is just way more reported on in Germany than it is in the USA. Basically they don't care what happens outside their borders so the places don't show up in local newspapers or TV news .

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You can't judge the entire US by low some IQ Californians.

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Our educational system might be in shambles, but anyone who grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons learned at least some geography...

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barginbinbey

is the school system in the us really that bad?

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12dozenroses

Yes

There's no uniformity.

it must be so confusing having 1 country with like 50 states that all have different laws about everything what an unnecessary mess

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barginbinbey

They teach you more "don't have sex because you will get pregnant and god will drag fifty children out of your uterus" than where places are on a map.

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places with a high tax base have better schools, but generally the public schools are substandard compared to other rich democracies

In my HS geography was an elective, and from what I can recall my freshman yr history course was a bit more global, but sophomore year you had to take civics +a history elective so I took criminal justice, junior year was US history and then senior year it wasn’t a required course.

Depends on where you live

Depends on the area. At the time, I thought my high school was okay. Then I got to college and was like ohhh okay, my school was NOT okay lol

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No. Seriously, this does not represent the majority of people, come on.

Edited at 2018-07-14 03:32 pm (UTC)

Obviously not, considering the American child at the end did very well

lbr geography is one of those subjects where you need a good teacher for it to not be boring af

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As a teacher, I can tell ya that it really depends on the school district. Some are better than others. Even within the school district there can be some disparity. For instance, areas in the district that are more affluent have way better resources and facilities than areas that are mainly working class. Those schools don't look as nice or have the top resources :/

I have no idea how it can be that bad tbh. My school was an American one and classes were decided by the American education system and we literally drew maps and had quizzes about countries, capitals, etc. So I thought most Americans had a decent education but apparently not.

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You can't blame the school system only.

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I was always enrolled at a performing/fine arts schools and live in Minnesota so I feel like got lucky when I read some of ontd us school stories because I got a good education for the most part! (Not so much with math though).

i mean that was 4 people out of probably 100 they interviews on the street. some people are just that dumb but most could probably get North America right.

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Former high school social studies teacher here. At my school, we didn't even offer geography as a course. World History was taught in one semester, while US history was taught in two. The entire curriculum is based around cramming as much history down the students' throats so they have a shot at answering a few of the 40 questions on the end of course test correctly.

Also, more and more schools are being coerced to focus entirely on graduation rates, which means teachers are pressured to pass students who've missed most the semester and might have a 25. It very much depends on the state and the principal. If you're curious, look up the recent scandal about how the D.C. school system was fudging the numbers to make themselves look better statistically, while completely fucking over the students.

They obviously cherry-pick. What fun is it if somebody answers reasonably? But the fact that people like that exist at all is disheartening at best.

No, I'm pretty sure most people can name at least one country, my school required a year of geography where we memorized countries. I think it's also more common to be familiar with what's around you, like most Americans can name neighboring states/Canada/Mexico/etc.

Yes, it's very "me" centric which is why we have private schools (which should be banned)

the only geography we did in class was memorizing the continents in eighth grade. each week we would have a different continent. i love geography tho.

@ some of these people how do you not name the united states???

I think people were probably thrown at the map since the maps we’re taught on in school are euro-centric and north and South America are on the left.

I was actually surprised so many people knew where Africa was.

This. When I saw that map it threw me off that I could not locate South America on the left side and was wondering why, how, and when Africa connected so seamlessly to Europe on the right side 😳

Yea I think this was part of it for sure.

i love that my uni uses the peters projection

lmao in Poland you do it when you are 7 or 8 years old

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schoolin Expand

not just the continents, right? like learning the countries in them..?

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otraera Expand

Geography was fun until I did it as one of my IBH courses in high school and instead of always doing fun stuff like human geography we had to learn about physical geography aka mountains and lake formations and land mapping and shit. THE WORST.

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They have to edit out the smart people in these segments right? That's what drives me nuts about them

Also, I don't understand this. Geography is so easy. Look at a map, think about it a bit, it embeds in your head.

This, plus some people have learned that acting dumb gets you on camera.

yea they interview like 50-100 people and pick out the worst ones

yes, these things are severely edited. See: the fallout from the video he did about AMERICANS CAN'T NAME ONE BOOK!!! LOL!!!

lmao yes, ppl in this post are going off about the quality of the US school system as exemplified through a Jimmy Kimmel bit.

Like yeah, our school system is not great, but also what's going on w/ yours if you can't reason with enough critical thinking to surmise that 4 people out of probably hundreds they stopped on the street probably don't constitute a legitimate sample size for your super scientific hypothesis.

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they do edit a lot of people out and naturally pick the funniest/dumb ones.

source: me who has attended several Jimmy Kimmel tapings and concerts.

generally speaking americans seem not to know where anything is

Those must be actors, right? I mean…

As someone who has dealt with a lot of American tourists...no. The shit people have said to me is unreal. Literally had a tourist who didn't understand why our money was different than American money. He didn't grasp the concept that Canada was a different fucking country.

i mean, when you call your country "america" when in reality there is more than one country in said continent...not a surprise they think america includes canada. but not mexico because racism, even though being latino is a not race. i'd say xenophobia

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i was in northern italy and an european couple was giving an american couple tips on places to visit in the country. the european couple went "you should visit naples." the american guy went "florida?"

bye.

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I'm not even american but people are fucking dumb

omg bernie was right... amerikkka really needs a revolution

geography admittedly isn't my strongest subject but no one in that video (except the boy at the end) can even point out where australia is..(?) i feel like that would be the easiest to identify. it's just a big standalone chunk at the bottom of the map.

and at least be able to identify where your own country is... come on now...

Edited at 2018-07-14 02:51 pm (UTC)

Yeah at first I thought it was a map without boundaries, which would be tough for some places, but there's always Australia and Japan.

Mte... At least point out your neigbouring countries, you share a border ffs

I'm American, and I'm horrible at Geography, so this information is in no way shocking.

God i love geography so much so this makes me mad lmao

I remember taking Geography class in high school but I work at a high school now and they don't teach it. It's scary how these kids don't know where the countries are.

they don't teach geography like....at all?

I'm sure they learn a little bit in middle school but yeah, at the high school I work at they don't have a class just for geography, which I had when I went to h.s.

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