Friday, 16 February 2024

The Problem With Geography Knowledge

 As a kid in rural Alabama schools....I often felt 'blessed' with each geography/history class having a big US and world map.   Now, if you'd asked me of the 25-odd kids in the group....did kids have trouble with assembling where things were?  Oh yeah...probably a quarter of kids just could not handle maps, or names of countries/states.

I was reminded of this from yesterday....watching the Willis/Wade court episode from Atlanta.  Wade showed some geography knowledge....Ms Willis?  Near zero.

I agree....some folks are making it through fifty years of life, with marginal knowledge of geography.  If you mentioned some trip that your church-friend went on, and asked what states they went through....it's fifty-fifty if they can cite that answer.

Is this a big deal?  No.  It's like lawn mower maintenance knowledge....you don't need 100-percent of people or for that matter even 10-percent of people with such knowledge. But you probably need 2-percent of folks to preserve such knowledge.  

Did it make Willis look stupid?  There's probably ten questions that she fumbled through.  The camera didn't really catch the judge, but I would imagine he was mostly shaking his head.

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