Out of 16 students in my general studies World Politics class only 1 could identify Iraq and Afghanistan on a blank map on their exam. One other student found Iraq and another correctly located Afghanistan.
Pardon me while I go weep quietly in the corner.
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February 11th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
I am not trying to dimiss how sad that your students or Americans in general don’t know where anything is located on a map, since the country and the conflict are not always reported with a world map as part of the story.
I would be curious if you asked your class how many states make up the union, how many would get it right. I asked one my very bright supervisors how many states were in the union and she guessed wrong.
February 11th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Goodness only knows.
February 11th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
I find that sorry indeed, but I’ve long been something of a map and geography geek compared to the average person.
No. That’s still too low. How can anyone who’s been alive and older than about 10 during the past several years not know where those two are? Joe Random Country maybe. Hey kid, which one is Uganda? Not so much. It’s a matter of current societal context that makes it truly surprising.
February 12th, 2007 at 3:34 am
How bad were the misses? I mean, did they hit Pakistan for Afghanistan or Jordon for Iraq, or were they completely off the mark?
February 12th, 2007 at 6:38 am
There was a rather remarkable range of misses. Some were close, others were waaay off.
February 12th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Was this exam given before you covered the regions in class as a guage of their initial knowledge? Or were the dismal scores earned AFTER a consideration of the two countries?
February 12th, 2007 at 10:27 am
So, Dr. Taylor, why do you think your students failed to meet your expectations?
This is a common complaint from professors in different fields. Do you think your experience has anything in common with that of other professors?
February 12th, 2007 at 11:20 am
A few years ago, when I was still teaching, I told one class in advance that they would need to know where Burma and India were on a map (we read some Gandhi and Aung San Suu Kyi in an intro to democracy class). Less than 5% got both, and most didn’t get either. So, I feel your pain, Dr. Taylor.
February 12th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Ratoe,
To be fair, it was a bonus question on the exam, so they had not been asked to study geography–although we had used maps of the region in class. It is simply depressing that after all most 4 years in Iraq most people can’t find it on a map–and this included at least one student who is in the military and may be deployed.
I was less shocked/concerned about Afghanistan, as it has received far less media exposure, although given that they were harboring al Qaeda and the fact that we have been there for over 5 years should make a more prominent bit of information.
Although based on the general performance on the test, I don’t think it would have mattered had it been something that they were supposed to study or not.
Dave:
Part of it is just general lack of general knowledge in the populace, and people on balance don’t pay attention to the news. Since there should have been some self-selection bias in favor of some interest in world affair, as the class is not a required one.
Ah well.
February 12th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Part of it is just general lack of general knowledge in the populace
Every time I hear or read of this sort of thing from a professor, my first reaction is to say it is due to a lack of general education in the populace (I mean eighth-grade education).
I suppose, however, that education presupposes curiosity, and there is likely a general lack of curiosity. Would this be more scandalous than a lack of knowledge, I wonder?
people on balance don’t pay attention to the news
Or they pay attention to the “news” and not the maps.
February 12th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I tried to identify the countries of South America in the same way. Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile not so tough. The smaller countries I believe I flunked.
February 13th, 2007 at 12:45 am
A sad commentary on the state of education
From poli sci professor Steven Taylor:Out of 16 students in my general studies World Politics class only 1 could identify Iraq and Afghanistan on a blank map on their exam. One other student found Iraq and another correctly located Afghanistan.
February 13th, 2007 at 5:20 am
Dear sir,
I am unsure how or whether your students’ shortcoming on this exercise is problematic. How is this kind of knowledge helpful by itself? Does it necessarily show that these students are unaware or indifferent? Surely not. Should american poli sci majors generally excel at identifying foreign countries in which American tax dollars are hard at work, or at least more readily than the average social science major? What rote exercise, indeed. Perhaps next time the examination should require each student to spout a random number aloud to the class, lest he has forgotten his favorite number, 24.
I would be quick to dismiss your observations and weeping as trivial, and am eager instead to redirect everyone’s attention to the once popular trivia tv show and video game “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?” for an astute and entertaining lesson in global geography. Otherwise, it is not clear to this reader that map memorization is an exercise worthy of collegiate lecture halls, whether for fun or examination.
Apologies for the simple rhetorical arguments, but frankly, map skills–though indeed fundamental–met their obsolescence some time ago with the marketing of affordable and clearly labeled globes.
February 13th, 2007 at 7:33 am
The weeping, of course, is simple silliness.
However, it hardly seems unreasonable that people could find Iraq on a map, a country where we have had troops deployed for almost four years hardly seems unreasonable.
February 13th, 2007 at 8:43 am
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting really tired of the argument that people no longer need to actually learn anything, because all information is now so readily available. It is just a crutch, in my opinion. Should elementary schools stop teaching addition and multiplication because calculators are readily available? Should we not teach spelling because of dictionaries and spell-check?
I wish these people would give it a rest already!
February 13th, 2007 at 9:31 am
[...] Stephen Bainbridge with a sad commentary on the state of education: From poli sci professor Steven Taylor: Out of 16 students in my general studies World Politics class only 1 could identify Iraq and Afghanistan on a blank map on their exam. One other student found Iraq and another correctly located Afghanistan. [...]
February 13th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
When LBJ became president, he did not know the differences between Iran and Iraq.
February 13th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
A note on the importance of education
Earlier today in the comment section of a post over at Poliblog I was part of a conversation dealing with the importance of students actually learning information instead of simply having access to the knowledge via some external source.