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Well, Europe is kind of complicated, right?
The folks over at Buzzfeed tried a hilarious little experiment recently – they printed out a map of Europe and asked their staff to label all the countries.
Depending on your knowledge of geography, the results are
a) Embarrassing
b) Understandable
c) What’s geography?
Here’s a highlight:
Have a look through the rest of these examples:
Seriously though, could you do any better?
Top Comments
No, I'd not do much better. I'm a product of 80's high school (Victoria) and was never taught anything about any other country other than Australia. Not history, not geography, nothing (except something about tundra, but not where it was). I didn't do these subjects past yr 10 as I did science/maths, so maybe it was covered after that. My kids are likewise sick to death of Aus history (bloody national curriculum doesn't help any) and they've got a way to go yet. We are no better. Sorry.
"It's a conspiracy I tells ya !"
I always worried that the reason for the embarrassing lack of the American's knowledge about the rest of the world might have been deliberate. The less they knew about other countries - the less they'd care.
This "government plot" makes sense until you meet regular American folk.......they're not lacking in empathy at all. They donate ........they help.......most of them are just like Aussies - just like us.
I'm always concerned about the lousy general knowledge of most people and terrible knowledge of History. In an age where many of us can GOOGLE the answer to anything - why do we know far less than we should ?
Maybe our level of curiosity has been dampened by information that's "spoon-fed".
Maybe most of us use this incredible information tool to only look up things like sporting information or Facebook or CATS.....lol.
I think that a major task of educators will be to spike the curiosity of our kids so that they want to find out about other countries, other people in the world.
So that they CARE.
Some of the best times in my life have been when I've travelled and the best advice I can give is to read up on your travel destinations......the history & traditions of the people so that you know what you're looking at........GEOGRAPHY is incredibly important to all of us because the world is so much closer to us now.