Half of young Americans can't find New York on a map!

ColinJ

Apparently 50 % of young Americans can't find New York on a map ! I find that a bit shocking but perhaps it doesn't come as a surprise.

As a matter of interest, could you? And are you American?

Also, and I'm assuming here that you are British, if I showed you an outline map of the UK with dots where the 16 biggest UK cities are, how many could you identify? This is the list:

London Birmingham Leeds Glasgow Sheffield Bradford Edinburgh Liverpool Manchester Bristol Cardiff Coventry Leicester Belfast Nottingham Newcastle on Tyne

I'll be honest with you - when I was younger I might have had difficulty with the pairs Manchester/Liverpool, Leeds/Bradford and Sheffield/Nottingham and I'd only have known which was Coventry and which was Leicester because I come from Coventry.

Monty Dog

It would have to be 13 as Leeds/Bradford would be my downfall even though my mother's from Leeds

ddraver

i don't think i'd do that well

is it a question of putting names on the dots or actually knowing the location on a blank UK map?!

magibob

I'd probably struggle with leeds/Bradford, but apart from those I'd be pretty confidant.


Andy

blackhands

ColinJ wrote:

Apparently 50 % of young Americans can't find New York on a map ! I find that a bit shocking but perhaps it doesn't come as a surprise.

Is that the 50% who think that Abraham Lincoln is president?

spasypaddy

well create the map and we can all do it

ColinJ

spasypaddy wrote:

well create the map and we can all do it

Ok then - here we go. I may be a few miles out here and there.



Yes - I know that there's something missing round city 13 - it wasn't on the map (used by permission of Ordnance Survey)!

Brains

OK, without the list to hand I managed 11 of 15

With the list, my hit rate would have been a bit higher, but speaking from experience on not just the urban American, but also their yokel couzins (American spelling), their collective knowledge of what goes on beyond their shores is not just appalling, but abysmal. I have seen numerous examples that would be funny if it were not so serious.

passout

I'm a teacher and British students aren't much better; may be worse!. I have taught a number of students who don't know which county they live in. In my experience cyclists are a pretty intelligent (or at least educated) lot so I don't think this poll means much. There are plenty of intelligent Americans - but there are divides just like the UK. In short, we are no better as a nation.

ddraver

where are the answers

I'm no good at the northern ones (from Cornwall you see)

Cajun

Most of the Public School Systems (in the US) CAN NOT meet the minimum standards of education requirements set by the government.. Some States have taken over larger City School systems, but I don't know what good this will do...Students 'have' to be passed onto the next grade-level so that they 'may feel good about theirselves'... heavens forbid that one should fail :shock: The scholastic standards are set so low now, that if set any lower, they'll get their high school diploma in the mail along with their birth certificate..
http://www.nea.org/esea/ayptrends0106.html
Of course, on of the main reasons given is that they're not receiving enough annual money/student...that's the American Way: throw enough money at the problem and the problem will go away...if you're not spending a lot of money, you're sure to fail... :evil: :evil:

loughor

50% of Americans can't find NY on a map...
and the other 50% couldn't find their "ass" with both hands !!

ColinJ

ddraver wrote:

where are the answers

I'm no good at the northern ones (from Cornwall you see)

It's not hard to Google for a map, but I suppose it's only fair that I provide the answers. They are below but I've made them hard to read (for most people with white browser backgrounds) so people don't accidentally read them:

14 = London 10 = Birmingham 6 = Leeds 15 = Glasgow 4 = Sheffield 8 = Bradford 16 = Edinburgh 7 = Liverpool 1 = Manchester 2 = Bristol 9 = Cardiff 11 = Coventry 3 = Leicester 13 = Belfast 12 = Nottingham 5 = Newcastle on Tyne

Since my original thread, I spoke to my ex and she told me that her sister went on holiday to Snowdonia several times but swore that she hadn't been to Wales. "Wales is in Ireland and I've never been there!" Blimey!

gumball3000

I worked in the states for the last two years.

Not only did all of the "Long Stand" "Tartan Paint" "Spare Bubble for the spirit level" tricks work on all ages on our work sites, I also managed to persuade several of the office staff that until 1989 England had been a communist state. America invaded England in 89 to free us from the Russians and hence us backing them with the Iraq wars.

When I asked if why they didn't remember it from History Lessons, they just said they didn't pay attention. One couldn't remember who they fought in the Second World War. I asked her who they fought in Vietnam and she looked at me and said........

"I am not stupid you know.....The Japanese"

Case closed.

ColinJ

passout wrote:

I'm a teacher and British students aren't much better; may be worse!. I have taught a number of students who don't know which county they live in. In my experience cyclists are a pretty intelligent (or at least educated) lot so I don't think this poll means much. There are plenty of intelligent Americans - but there are divides just like the UK. In short, we are no better as a nation.

I went to Leeds once to watch the Leeds Classic (bike race) finish there. While I was waiting for the riders to arrive I sat down on a bench in the city centre and got chatting to a man who looked like he was about 75 years old. He told me that he was born in Leeds and had lived there his whole life. He asked where I'd come from that day...

"Hebden Bridge"

"Where's that - I've never heard of it?"

I was pretty surprised - it's only 20 miles away across West Yorkshire as the crow flies. Still, it's only a small town so he could be excused...

"It's halfway between Leeds and Manchester and it is on the Leeds-Halifax-Manchester railway line"

"I don't know where Halifax and Manchester are either."

I was completely floored by that! Manchester is the UK's 9th largest city, but if you take in Greater Manchester it is about the size of Birmingham, the UK's second city. It is only 37 miles from Leeds.

Halifax is a very famous town in West Yorkshire so I'd expect anyone who was West Yorkshire born and bred to know where it is. Especially someone from Leeds, only 15 miles away, 2 town stops away by train.

"Well, if you get on the train at Leeds and go to Bradford, that is about 25 minutes away. Stay on the train and Halifax is another 10 minutes down the line. Hebden Bridge is another 15 minutes away, and from there it is 40 minutes to Manchester."

"Er, I have heard of Bradford, but I've never been there."

What!!!! It is only 8 miles from Leeds. Less than 3 hours on foot, and less than 30 minutes on a bicycle or by train. Less than that by car or motorbike. It is probably only 30 or 40 minutes by bus. Bradford is the UK's 6th biggest city and is pretty much the sister city to Leeds. The two are part of one great conurbation and someone lives in one city for 75 years and never bothers to go and take a look at the other 8 miles away... Some people don't get out much!

What I found really hard to grasp was how someone could show so little interest in his own area. Even as a child growing up in the midlands I went further afield on my bicycle than that old guy had done in his whole life and I don't think of myself as being adventurous.

Philip S

That beats my story, but I'll give you it anyway.

On holiday in San Francsico in 2000, sitting chatting to the other half on one of those little cable cars that goes halfway to the stars. American guy next to us smiles and asks "Where are you guys from?"

"We're from Edinburgh, in Scotland" Recognising that Scotland might be a leap in the geographical dark for this fella, I added "in Britain" (I've seen students with "Scottish" as their nationality on their student ID cards forced to pay full price rather than EU student price at Greek museums as the ticket seller had never heard of Scotland and refused to believe that it was in the EU - a lesson for the SNP there, but that's another story...)

Blank look

"The United Kingdom."

Blank look

"England?"

Blank look

"London?"

Blank look

"You know, in Europe"

Blank look

"Across the Atlantic Ocean"

Shakes head

"That's the big bit of water that you come to if you head east from New York"

Blank look, shakes head and says "I'm sorry, I'm from North Dakota. I'm kinda dumb."

Brains

On a land trip across the Sates t'other half an i gave up trying to explain that England was 'abroad' and just let them assume we came from somewhere in the east, and were quite happy for the better educated to think it was New England we came from. Certainly in the mid West and South the lack of knowledge of what went on beyond their borders was staggering and quite frankly frightening.

As for the parochial inhabitant of Leeds, living in Cornwall as a kid there were a number of inhabitants of the village who had never been out of the county, and a single trip to London in a lifetime was not unusual,

The local farmers wife in her 60+ years had never moved more than than 10 miles from where she was born in her life. In my 20's a bought her a knick nack back from Hong Kong, it was the most exotic thing she had even been given and was pride of place on the mantlepiece until she died a few years ago. She may have been a bit unusual in this day and age, but I'd guess not that unusual a generation or two back.

To an extent, if you have never been there, why do you need to know about it.

There is a story, I'm not sure how true, about the British Army recruiting soldiers to fight Napoleon. The Cornish had a vote on which side to be on, and to this day, anything to the east of the Tamar is 'foreign' and a 'foreigner' is a non-Cornish person

Mark Alexander

I was ok until Cardiff when I got confused with where I live
no, got them all. Quite pleased with myself actually 8)

girofan

Bradford!
That's in Pakistan, isn't it? :roll: :roll:

Mike Healey

I can' find New York on my map, but its Landranger 104.

If US geographical ignorance is so great, how do they know they gave them the right map?

Another survey a few years ago discovered that 75% of new Mexico schoolchildren couldn't find Mexico on a map.

Mine you, 75% of the people in the UK don't understand percentages, so 3/4 of you haven't understood a word I've just said

rparkes

Then there was this sales rep pulled up to ask directions of a local in Gornal (in the Black Country). " how do I get to Tipton?" Aynuk thought for a while and said " It ay easy te tell thee cos when I goo I doe start from ere". The rep replied that it was a stupid answer. "arh" says Anuk " i might be stupid but I bay lost like yo"

DavidBelcher

rparkes wrote:

Then there was this sales rep pulled up to ask directions of a local in Gornal (in the Black Country). " how do I get to Tipton?" Aynuk thought for a while and said " It ay easy te tell thee cos when I goo I doe start from ere". The rep replied that it was a stupid answer. "arh" says Anuk " i might be stupid but I bay lost like yo"

Speaking of the Black Country; someone has already mentioned Leeds and Bradford as being in a conurbation - I live in that neck of the woods now but grew up in Wolverhampton, and compared to Leeds/Bradford, between which there are the odd semi-rural bits in the Aire Valley, the boundaries between individual towns in the "true" Black Country i.e. (there seems to be divided opinion whether Wolverhampton itself is a part of it or not) are very blurred indeed. The area was once defined - by Midlands writer Walter Allen, I think - as "never from where one is from oneself, but where the next town begins"....
By the way, I managed to get 13 out of the 14 cities - wasn't sure if No. 12 was Derby or Nottingham, as there aren't many miles between them.

David