The U.S. ranks pretty high in a lot of things, but apparently our knowledge of geography isn't one of them. Being that this was not my strongest subject throughout my schooling, nor in pursuits trivial, I'm certainly not going be the one to convince anyone otherwise on this...
Out of 192 countries participating, the U.S. ranks #20 in the The Geography Olympics Challenge. I didn't improve upon this at all when Alysa issued me the challenge this morning (to note: I had to play about 5 times cause I really couldn't believe how bad I was).
Seriously, when you have hundreds of countries that are smaller than our states, how could anyone possibly "label all the countries on the globe starting with a blank map?" Of course, the challenge only makes you play 10 at a time, but still. I'm too embarrassed to tell I won't bother you with my score, but let's just say it was worse than my already upsetting score on this...
So, my apologies to my fellow Californians and Americans for bringing us down on the leaderboard. What's scary is that I would have done even worse if I hadn't been such a fanatic of this... once upon a time.
I still love puzzles--maybe I should invest in this...
This challenging 600-piece puzzle is unique due to the fact that the pieces are actually shaped like the countries of the world. You can't complete it without figuring out where every country is located. No other puzzle comes with such a superb geography lesson!
Everybody else, get on over to geographyolympics.com and take the challenge to get our numbers back up!
More about this...
geographyolympics.com is brought to you by the people of A Broader View, an Atlanta based company. Well aware of the lack of geographic knowledge among our nation's people, we have put together these pages to attempt to do something about it.
The Geography Challenge assembled here on this site is quickly proving the lack of geography knowledge in the United States relative to the rest of the world.
We want to present a challenge to all Americans to work together to improve these statistics. And it starts with each of us on an individual level. There are approximately 192 countries in this world, depending on who is counting. I can promise you that the majority of people in the majority of those countries know a lot about the USA. At the bare minimum, they at least know where it is located.
I believe we should all make an effort to extend them that same courtesy and attempt to learn about the rest of the world around us, and geographyolympics.com offers us all the opportunity to do exactly that.
Incidentally, I think it's interesting that the U.S. is among the top (or is the top) provider of aid to many of these 192 countries even though we have no idea where they are. While I'm not excusing our ignorance of geographical knowledge, I think it's important to note this does not automatically translate into ignorance of goings on in the world. I'm sure everyone in those 192 countries knows that New York City and D.C. were hit on 9/11, but how many of them could put a tack on a blank map and pinpoint the location of this...?
Great site.
I ran out of time guessing where Ghana is, and I erroneously clicked Indonesia for Malaysia. But I did get Armenia, Belarus, Tunisia, Namibia, Cameroon, Serbia and Montenegro, Venezuela, and Portugal.
In all fairness, my son has a geography game that does much the same thing...
Cheers,
Posted by: Moze | January 31, 2005 at 08:49 AM
I tried the quiz, too, I was just confused by the lack of interstate highway signs. Did they leave them off for a reason? Besides if I can't drive to there, I don't need to go there.
Posted by: Kelly | January 31, 2005 at 01:10 PM
Hey, 70% and 80% on the first two tries! Ok Tuvalu & Kyrgyzstan I should've known.
This is fun. I'm gonna get one of their puzzles for my eight year old son. The "hands on" approach seems to do much better for him than looking at an abstract picture called a map.
Thanks for the info! Have you ever seen the "Globe Trekker," or "Pilot Guides" series on BBC? What a way to make a living.
Oh yeah, Kelly [Besides if I can't drive to there, I don't need to go there.] get thee to a nunery!
Posted by: tim jansing | January 31, 2005 at 09:07 PM
Well I'm over here at National Geographic's GeoSpy getting my geography on.
Currently placing 43 out of 47 countries in Asia--this after a few practice rounds. Europe is next.
BTW - is Australia officially called Oceania and I didn't know it? Wombat, can ya help me out on this...?
Posted by: tallglassofmilk | January 31, 2005 at 09:42 PM
Mission accomplished +0.01. Oceania is not Australia, it's a bunch of Pacific Islands somewhere in some big ocean or something.
Posted by: pedro | February 01, 2005 at 05:14 AM