"Miss US American"
Posted on 11/29/2009 8:12:39 AM PST by Saije
Year after year surveys reveal that only 37 percent of young Americans know where Iraq is and a large minority cannot locate the Pacific Ocean on a map.
Like clockwork, commentators then write how horrible it is that America is so geographically illiterate. While it is true that geographic ignorance is a big problem, these commentators do geography no favors.
Geography has long been thought of as merely the memorization of places. This is how it is taught by many schools.
The notion that geography is just a memory game and not a science led some of the nation’s finest educational institutions including Harvard University to stop teaching geography in the 1940s and 1950s. Geography has been in exile ever since.
Geography is more than place memorization. It is a spatial science that involves studying what is where, why it is there and why people should care. This expands geography to include places, cultures, environmental patterns and behavior by persons and cultures.
A geographic background helps people understand economic patterns such as why the Rust Belt is where it is and how the Asian economic tigers managed to feed each other’s growth by capitalizing on their shared access to the Pacific Ocean.
Having information on the layout of various Afghan ethnic groups and how they relate to one another would help coalition forces in predicting how the Taliban will try to spread its insurgency.
Finally, home buyers could save themselves misfortune in the future if they learn how to read Geological Survey maps, which would tell them if their home is in a flood plain or in an area full of sinkholes.
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
I knew a woman once who thought there was a separate state known as New England.
You got it . Thank your NEA , the union thugs who are allowing American children's future to be hijacked .
The objective was simple--to dumb down the future electorate so that they would have little knowledge of the real world, and be more dependent on left-wing politicians to tell them what to think.
The fact is, if one peruses a map of the world intelligently, all sorts of otherwise baffling things fall into place--like the geopolitics of foreign policy and national security.
When I was a kid we studied geography per se from at least the fourth grade on up. Every classroom had a set of large maps to pull down in front of the blackboards, and we used them--political maps, topographical maps, maps of natural resources, rainfall, you name it. Anyone who knows the geography of the Middle east will not have been surprised by the events of the last oh, hundred years or so.
How can the students learn geography when it is taught by “teachers” who don’t know geography themselves? Being of 18 years of age, I am certainly considered a young American, however, I know geography very well. I learned the layout of the world through extensive study of history. It saddens me to report that in my experience with most young Americans my age, it is quite true that they cannot locate basic countries on a map such as Somalia or Vietnam. It seems to me though, that it is a bit of a stretch to say many of us can’t locate the Pacific Ocean on a map...
The lack of good education in ANY subject leads me to entertain the ideas that (a) Schools don't want to teach anything of substance, and (b) Teachers probably were produced by the same system and couldn't even if they wanted to.
Then consider the uninvolved parents who are either working at their second jobs or are watching TV, consider the PC advocates who will pounce on the mildest transgression and scare the teachers into submission, and consider the lawyers who will sue everyone in sight if ANY discipline is wielded.
Currently, it's a no-win system. We need "Change we can believe in!" How's that for a political slogan?
Is the Pacific ocean the big blue part in the middle?
No, that’s blue tarp covering the parts we are not using right now.
Betcha dime to dollar--- RACIST !!!
Automatically DOUBLE whatever stats are given on the cost of government K-12 education. Why?
Answer: Government school budget reports would make an Enron accountant blush!
For instance, in my state retired government teachers and government school employees are NOT, NOT, NOT counted as a school expense. They are listed as retired state employees and their retirement and health care benifits are accounted for in the general state budget. That's a biggie right there!
Then there are the school bonds. Our county has just opened a 70 MILLION DOLLAR Taj Mahal of a high school. Not one penny of that is considered a school expense in our school budget reports. Why? Answer: Because it is considered a county bond expense!
Add to that all the services that our schools use in our county that are NEVER reported as a school expense. These include, for example, police security in the schools, traffic control for games, lawn care, and county attorneys, just to name a few.
Maps were one of the things I used to look forward to every month when I had a subscription to National Geographic. When I was a teenager I had my bedroom pretty much wallpapered with maps.
I suspect I could go just about anywhere here in the states without a map. I might not get to an adress in Californa without a map but I can get myself to a neighborhood. Years ago I drove to Frisco Texas without a map and got to within a block of where I was going before making a phone call to get the rest of the way there.
Lots of kids these days can’t cross the street without a GPS and it better tell them to look both ways first.
The first "Pacific President" will let us know, if we need to....
The government schools are the BIGGEST single employer in our county! This is true for many, many counties in our nation. Even my **dentist** and his 5 employees depend on government school dental insurance as a source of income for his office!
It is pernicious.
They are stacked with teachers themselves, family members of teachers, and people who the union backs.
In my county it is IMPOSSIBLE to get elected to the school board without the teacher's union support. And...To make matters even worse, having won the elected position of school board member is the spring board for every other higher elected position in this state. ( Geeze! And, we wonder why we get RINOs? )
I know so many people from college in sales or marketing who make high 6 figure salaries yet would fail a 6th grade geography or history test.
On the other hand, I can ace ANY geography or history test yet make nowhere near that kind of scratch.
Point being, education doesn’t necessary determine success.
I visited England during school vacation one year. A fellow teacher asked me, “Did you fly or drive?”
The idea that we have to know certain things is absurd. We retain what we need, pursue what we think helpful. We are individuals.
Good for you , but we already know you are exceptional because you are a Freeper . Try handing out blank sheets of paper and asking people make a map of the US , naming the states .
What would happen if we gave every government teacher in this nation one month to prepare for, take, and pass, the GED for high school dropouts? I am willing to bet that the ranks of government teachers would be utterly decimated!
The lack of good education in ANY subject leads me to entertain the ideas that (a) Schools don't want to teach anything of substance,
The very **GOAL** of the progressive Utopian school reformers and industrialist of the mid-1800s and early 1900s **WAS** to create compulsory government schools that would produce compliant workers for the fascist state! Getting a "good" education is not conducive to being a good little slave to the fascist state.
By the way....From the very beginning of government schooling in the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, children learn every day to be **comfortable** with taking money from their neighbor to pay for a service their parents want for FREE. Do this for one to 3 generations and you will get voters who are comfortable with the IRS, the Federal Reserve, FDR's New Deal, Johnson's Great Society and a thousand other socialist paper cuts, and, now, a MARXIST Obama!
government schools were a socialist abomination from the beginning! They have taught Americans on a daily basis to be comfortable with using their neighbor's money! They can NOT be reformed. They ARE socialist, and socialism can NOT be reformed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.