As we've been watching the World Cup this weekend, I can't help but think that most Americans had never heard of Cameroon or Cote d'Ivoire before today. And most probably don't know that Slovenia is different than Slovakia, which is different from Serbia. Yugoslavia? Yeah, it's no longer a country. Neither is Czechoslovakia. And Austria doesn't have a coast.
But why does it really matter? What do these little boundaries mean anyway? We're America! That's what matters! (Never mind the fact that Americans would riot if someone accidentally referred to us as Canada or Mexico.) Knowing geography matters because people matter. People around the globe matter. And just as the people of Canada (few that they are) have different traditions and a different history than America, the people of Slovenia have a very different history and traditions from Serbia. I'll never forget reading Robert Kaplan's book Balkan Ghosts. Kaplan suggested that if his readers wanted to understand the political, religious and social turbulence of the Middle East, they should look to the area formerly known as Yugoslavia. In essence, he summed up why I think history and geography are important: if you want to understand what's going on in the world, you need to understand its intricate past and its geopolitical present.
Now who knows where Lesotho is?
Most college grads that know capitals and names know little else about those countries, though. Our culture rewards such superficial knowledge in game shows and trivia, but there is little incentive to learn more.
ReplyDeleteWhile I completely see where you're coming from, many people who take the time to study capitals and countries in college do so within the context of also studying their history and politics (or at least at my little liberal arts college, there weren't any "only learn the geography and nothing else" classes. We can have a debate on whether or not people learn anything in these classes, but that's another topic!)
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that we must go farther than just learning names and places, but I do believe it's an important place to start. When surveys by National Geographic and others find that 6 in 10 young Americans can't find Iraq on the map, we've got a problem.