Geography article of the day

I was going to start this blog off with a different topic and save 'Geography article of the day' for later but something caught my eye on yahoo's homepage.  It was an article titled "Only 25 percent of American Students passed their Geography Test" by Liz Goodwin at The Lookout.  It is pretty self explanatory from the title of the article but the scary part is that its not just one age group, it encompasses samples from 4th grade, 8th grade and 12th grade!  Having a B.S. in Geography and working on my Masters I find this news, although disturbing, not that surprising.  Its sad to see such a multi faceted discipline that can support and interact with any other discipline just lose so much ground in the United States.  It is amazing what students don't know about geography, even the ones who falsely believe its just about states and capitals because many don't even know those!  I remember a few years ago sitting in a World Regional Geography class, one that was required for my major but also open to students for university credit.  When studying the United States, we had quizzes on the states and capitals, to my surprise there were some students who didn't even know what state they were in, or which states surround ours.  Maybe it was all the maps i looked at as a child watching the weather channel or paying attention in history class but i couldn't believe the lack of knowledge about these students own surroundings!  This is just one of many reasons why Geography needs to be given the respect it deserves and instituted back into our education programs!

http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/g/geography_test_gifts.asp