Mark Twain apparently said, "God created war so that Americans would learn geography."

As an American, this stereotype is a bit annoying for those of us who do know a lot about the world, but I fear there is some truth in it when I talk to friends and relatives. Some of us even struggle pretty badly with American geography. Is this a symptom of Americans not caring about the world around them? Or do the people of other countries have the same problem?

As an Australian, I can tell you where each state lies within the country and most major cities and towns. We have this drummed into us right from early primary school (or at least when I was there ).

I learnt where each continent lies and most large countries, as well as those countries that we learnt about in ancient history (Greece, Italy, Egypt, etc).

Apart from that, I know where SOME countries are in Europe (mostly the general area, rather than specifically) and I could probably tell you the location of one or two US states. We just never learnt it in school and I'm not really interested now, unless something happens there that I feel I should know about, or I intend going there.

I don't know if that's ignorance, or it's information I don't require in my head (ie, the "I don't really care right now" factor )?

Unlikely. I suspect that one of the difficulties when teaching world geography in the Americas (not just the U.S.) is that they (the Americas) are separated by large oceans from much of the rest of the world, especially the large centres of population to the east and west. (In many respects this geographical isolation also holds for Australia). This may make much of the rest of the world seem very remote and perhaps even 'unreal'.

Having said that, any 'sense of remoteness' is a matter of perceptions and will vary enormously from household to household and individual to individual.

Geography in American schools has been dropped as a "students must learn this" subject more and more. Every study done shows how students over the years are less and less able to A. Find their country on a world map, B. Find the state they live in on a map of the USA, C. Know the capital of their home state or, sometimes, the country.

That being said, I knew a woman from Australia who couldn't pick out the Pacific Ocean on a map. She now lives in New Zealand because, she said, she wanted to move and she knew where that country was.

When my younger brother bought his home, one selling point for him was the playroom in the basement with a map of the world painted on one wall. The seller offered to paint it over but he wanted it to stay so his kids, once they learned to read, wouldn't "grow up as stupid as some others" in his words.

According to this report, which came out in 2011, the position of geography in schools in schools in Britain is not much better:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12359446

I've always loved maps, so I'm not a good judge of this - I remember being eight years old and memorizing all the countries in Africa and where they were.

From speaking to American friends, I think the focus in most American schools is a little more US-centric than that in Canadian schools. For example, I "did" the American Revolution in the tenth grade, but can't imagine any tenth graders in the US studying the Canadian march to Confederation.

I'd say the difference is reasonably small, though - it's not like American kids are only getting a self-focused education while kids in the rest of the world are getting some wonderful world-based view. It's just that it's natural for any school system to put emphasis on their own history and geography, and if you are in a large and geographically diverse country with few near neighbours, a certain amount of isolation is, again, natural.

It seems that Chinese students here know hardly anything about where places are out of China, or at least Asian countries that are near, like Japan.It really is true that people confuse Austria with Australia!
But that said, I can remember people in my native Cornwall being amazed that I lived in Hong Kong
"Do ee know 'ow to speak Japanese then?"
"How be gettin' on wi' all they Commies?".
Mind you, a trip to Truro was an event to them!!

Interesting. When I taught in Korea, the students were very young, so I didn't really get a good gauge on whether or not they knew geography well.

America used to be a lot more isolationist in our history, so the Mark Twain quote seems more prescient than anything. Perhaps because the country has been so involved in so many world affairs in the near past, there is a sort of onus on Americans to know where everything in the world is. I would day a lot of people could point out the U.S. on a map, but I certainly know that a lot of people I know wouldn't be able to tell Austria and Hungary apart on a map.

It does seem to take a large event for us to pay attention. A lot more people now know where Iraq and Syria are, or even a country like Malaysia because of all those maps that were shown on TV during the search for the airliner.

I teach every day as a substitute teacher which means I go around to different age levels and see a lot of what's going on. I live in a multicultural area though with immigrants from every possible language background. I think this makes a difference.

The curriculum is there though I think it was watered down when I was a child because they feared us memorizing anything as that would traumatize us. Only those of us who enjoyed it managed that well.

It seems to vary from school to school. I see some abysmally ignorant people who are almost proud to be ignorant even though, well, US soldiers go abroad to fight in foreign lands about which they know nothing until they arrive.

I have seen some teachers try to have children memorize states and their capitals still. I was surprised.

To be completely honest though, in France, where I'd put most any French person against an American and they'd win hands down in geography, if they were a certain age, they've watered it down a bit too. My children did not have to memorize the Departements or local areas. In their father's time they had to know them by heart. As I was a translator I ended up memorizing quite a few. It was very handy.

The children in school are always amazed that I know where...let me see, Liberia is, or that I know what languages are spoken in Afghanistan or Jordan. I just tell them that I've been around a lot. I met a girl from Iceland the other day in one class! she was amazed I'd been there and knew a bit about her country.

I think you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink though.

I was born in England and moved to Australia when I was 11. I was also fortunate enough to marry an American and I moved there shortly after my marriage. I think back in those days "the 80s" not many Americans knew too much about geography. I got a job in a bank and on my first day when I was on a break, I spoke to a colleague. She said "Where are you from?" I said "Australia." She said "Oh, kangaroos and koalas! How long have you been living here?" I said "Three weeks." She then asked "How did you learn to speak English so quickly?" I then had to tell her that Australia was an English speaking country. She didn't know that.

I think since then, the Americans have gotten a lot better at knowing that there are lots of other countries out there besides their own

Americans are most definitely not the only ones who are not great at geography. At my place of work most of the colleagues cannot even say which coast the big seaside resorts are on, or where other counties or towns are and so on. They would have absolutely no chance naming foreign places.

At school I did not learn anything at all about where places are on maps or capitals or countries. We learnt about populations, physical phenomena such as earthquakes, plate tectonics etc farming systems, how towns and cities form and grow and so on and so on.

I know about countries, towns, capitals, continents because I read books as a small child. My parents always took me to the library and let me get map books, flag books and so on. When we went on journeys when I was little I had my own road map so that I could see where we were going and I learnt much about local and regional geography by doing that.

We were taught all the US states and their capitals in 4th grade (9 yrs old), though I knew them all before that because my mom taught me a song when I was 6 where I learned all 50 states in alphabetical order. In 8th grade (13 yrs old) I took a social studies class where we learned all the countries in North/Central/South America, Europe, and Africa, and their capitals. Then in 9th grade, I took a class called Global History, and we learned where every European and Asian country was (and the European capitals), and we had an exam where we had to label all of them on a map. I distinctly remember doing an activity in class where we had cutout shapes of all the European countries, and just from the shapes had to name the country and reconstruct a European map.

My father and I are very good at Geography, but my mother and brother are not. My brother does know Europe and the Americas fairly well (though a lot of his European geography came from family vacations and watching the History and Discovery channels on TV). My mother simply has other things in mind that are more important for her to remember. She does know all the US states and capitals, all the Canadian provinces and capitals, and most of West Europe (only some capitals), Australia/New Zealand, and Russia/Japan/China/India. Other than that she oftentimes has to guess which continent something is on. I much prefer she keep to saving lives, though, and not worry about, say, where Lesotho is, for example.