Deep In Sleep

Okay, so this is nothing new or even surprising–we, as Americans, tend to be self-focused. Studies have shown that six out of ten 18-24 year old’s can’t locate Iraq on a map. Given that the War in Iraq began just about four years ago, and we as a nation have currently spent $405,042,201,875 on the war, the fact that 60% of young adults can’t locate the country on a map is a cause of concern for me. Now to be fair, one-third of these same study participants couldn’t pinpoint Louisiana on a map and 48 percent were unable to locate Mississippi. Both of these regions, as you know, were devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

So what does this mean? Is geography not important, as 70% of participants would have you believe? I’ll be the first to admit that I am not great with geography, but do I believe it’s important, yes. Someday these young adults (including me) will be in charge of our country, and being the biggest power in the world, it is our obligation to effectively control international affairs. Really, how much confidence can a country like Iraq have in the United States occupying their country, when the majority of our country doesn’t know Iraq’s location from Israel’s (75% don’t know where Israel is located.) As for not knowing where some states are located in the United States, that is another story. It’s hard to convince anyone that one is not egocentric, when he or she doesn’t even know the 50 States’ locations.

In sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 31,935,184 women, children, and men have died of AID’s. The number there infected with HIV is approximately 47,271,010. Everyday, 16,000 children alone die in the world from hunger related causes. That’s one child who dies every 5 seconds, a majority of which are coming from sub-Saharan Africa. There is a current genocide occurring in Darfur, Sudan, with more conflict widespread throughout Africa. Almost fifty percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. Imagine how devastating these statistics would be for the United States.

About every other American believes that the United States overspends on foreign aid. People also believe that we as a country spend a great deal more money helping other countries than we actually do. Polls suggest that most Americans think the federal government spends about 10 to 15 percent of its budget on foreign aid. The truth is that we spend less than 1 percent, the lowest of any industrialized nation. All of sub-Saharan Africa receives just over $1 billion in economic aid. If everyone in America gave up one soft drink a month, we could double our current aid to Africa. Again, we have spent over 400 billion dollars on the war in Iraq, so far. It is nearly impossible to help these desperate countries if we don’t even know, or care, where they are located.

Try this test to get an idea to see just how knowledgeable you are with your geography. You’ll have 10 minutes on both tests to list all the states in the United States you can remember, and then 10 minutes to list the 54 counties in Africa. I was able to get all 50 states, but the countries in Africa was an entirely different story. If you want to have an actual map to identify, I’ll link one for both continents also. This should be a pretty concrete example, showing us that it is time for a change.

10 minute tests

U.S. Test Africa Test

Geography tests with map

U.S. Test Africa Test

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Current News. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.