Quote:
Originally Posted by Babaganoosh
To THEM it may be relevant but the average American doesn't need to know how to find European countries on a map. That ability is trivial. Like I said, the US has a land mass greater than most of the countries in western Europe combined. Ask Europeans if they can find West Virginia or Oregon on a map. If they can't, chastise them and disregard their opinions. That's the holier-than-thou attitude Americans have had to tolerate for a long time.
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Being an American living in the UK, I totally understand that the average British person, for example, doesn't have more than a vague idea of the map of the USA when you get away from the big cities or tourist destinations. Nearly every time I am asked where I am from and say Philadelphia I have to follow it up with 'it is bellow New York but above Washington, D.C.'.
However, one is a part within a country and the other is an entire country. It also really doesn't matter is somebody that calls themselves an 'average' American thinks that the rest of thee world is irrelevant to them. They are wrong. Finding anybody in the the Western world whose life was not impacted in some way by another country is going to be very hard in a global economy. Why on earth would one want to champion the cause of ignorance? Surely we should want people,wherever they live, to have the best education they can have and that includes - as I said - geography.