14 DAY TRIAL // "Young Americans just don't seem to have much interest in the world outside of the U.S.," said David Rutherford, a specialist in geography education at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. But it turned out they have problems even with US geography.
Half of the 510 respondents aged 18 to 24 could not find New York State on a map of the United States. A third could not find Louisiana, and 48 percent couldn't locate Mississippi, even though the southern states were in the news lately due to Hurricane Katrina. And when asked which border is the most heavily fortified in the world, 30 percent answered the border between US and Mexico (the correct answer being the border between North and South Korea). Moreover, 29 percent thought the US population is larger than 1 billion people and 29 percent that it is between 500 million and 750 million (in fact it's around 200 million).
But when it came to world geography the situation was even worse. In spite of Iraq war which began in 2003, 63 percent of young Americans failed to locate the country on a map of the Middle East. And seventy percent could not find Iran or Israel.
54 percent were unaware that Sudan is an African country, 20 percent of them thinking it's in Asia and 10 percent thinking it's a European country.
Three-quarters of respondents failed to find Indonesia on a map and were also unaware that a majority of Indonesia's population is Muslim, although Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world. 48 percent thought that the majority of India's population is Muslim.
When asked what the world's most spoken primary language is, they overwhelmingly (74%) said English, when in fact it's Mandarin Chinese.
"It's discouraging that so many young Americans have so little understanding of the world," said Robert Pastor, vice president of international affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. "The good news is education, travel, and language matter. The young people who have more education, who have traveled outside the country, and who can speak a second language are more likely to answer more questions on the geography survey correctly. So it shows Americans are educable, and the only question is whether American teachers will do more to interest their students in more education, language, and study-abroad activities."
The study also showed that respondents who use the Internet do better on the survey than those who do not. This is somewhat encouraging since the percentage of young Americans who use the Internet for news has more than doubled from 11 percent to 27 percent since 2002.