Saturday, November 19, 2005

Survey Reveals Geographic Illiteracy

But hey, at least the U.S. is smarter than Mexico.

They have a sample survey available on-line, and I'm pleased to note that I got all the questions right (although some had to be by process of elimination). The on-line sample gives the questions in multiple-choice format, then the correct answer, and then a graph showing the percentage of people who got the question correct, based on nationality. They have data on nine countries: Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, and the U.S.

What's amazing is how many people got some of these questions wrong. Now, of course, I'd expect that for some of these--such as the locations of Afghanistan, India, or Argentina.

But the first question is "What is the current population of the United States?"

And only 1/4 of Americans know. Every other country on the survey scored better on that than we did.

The second question is "Which religion has the largest number of follows world-wide?" And I am stunned by the number of people who got it wrong. Mexico actually scored best (92%), with Italy second (73%) and the U.S. and Canada tying for third (62%).

Despite the fact that we waged two incompetent wars against the Taliban and al Qaida, not even 3/5 of Americans know which country they were based in. And less than half know "which organization endorses the euro as the common currency for its members".

I know I shouldn't be... but I'm still stunned by our amazing ignorance.

But I at least found this tidbit, um... vindicating? I'm not sure:

Americans who reported that they accessed the Internet within the last 30 days scored 65 percent higher than those who did not.

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