I see stupid people all the time.
Survey Results: U.S. Young Adults Are Lagging
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skreed.com

N A NATION CALLED THE WORLD'S SUPERPOWER, only 17 percent of young adults in the United States could find Afghanistan on a map, according to a new worldwide survey.

The National Geographic - Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey polled more than 3,000 18- to 24-year-olds in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and the United States. Sweden's youth scored the highest. Young Americans, however, didn't do as well. In fact, America came in second to last, with 83 percent of those quizzed unable to locate Afghanistan.

The young U.S. citizens received poor marks generally in geography. But then, as results showed, their counterparts in other countries were hardly star students.

Sweden scored highest; Mexico, lowest. The U.S. was next to last.

"The survey demonstrates the geographic illiteracy of the United States," said Robert Pastor, professor of International Relations at American University, in Washington, D.C. "The results are particularly appalling in light of September 11, which traumatized America and revealed that our destiny is connected to the rest of the world."

About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean's location was a mystery to 29 percent.

Despite the threat of war in Iraq and the daily reports of suicide bombers in Israel, less than 15 percent of the young U.S. citizens could locate either country.

More young U.S. citizens in the study knew that the island featured in last season's TV show "Survivor" is in the South Pacific than could find Israel.

Particularly humiliating was that all countries were better able to identify the U.S. population than many young U.S. citizens. Within the U.S., almost one-third said that population was between one billion and two billion; the answer is 289 million.

However, young adults worldwide are not markedly more literate about geography than the Americans.
Poor Geographic Literacy Worldwide

Successfully identifying the Pacific Ocean eluded 58 percent of the young Japanese; 65 percent of the French and 69 percent of the Brits.

On average, fewer than 25 percent of young people worldwide could locate Israel on the map. Only about 20 percent could identify hotspots like Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.

Of all the young adults in the survey, only about one-third in Germany, Sweden and Japan, could name four countries that officially acknowledge having nuclear weapons. In the rest of the countries that number dropped to less than a quarter. In France 24 percent did not know that that their own country was a nuclear nation.

Several perhaps interrelated factors affected performance -- educational experience (including taking a geography course), international travel and language skills, a varied diet of news sources, and Internet use. Americans who reported that they accessed the Internet within the last 30 days scored 65 percent higher than those who did not.