Opinion: What in the world do we know?

In a geography quiz sponsored by the National Geographic Society and given to more than 3,000 adults age 18 to 24 years old in nine countries, Americans displayed an embarrassing ignorance. Out of 56 questions -- the same given to each of the nine countries participating -- test-takers from the United States averaged 23 correct answers. The score gave the United States a grade of D and put us second to last in the ranking, just inching past Mexico. Sweden topped the list with an average of 40 correct answers.

You might conclude from our abysmal score that the questions were terribly difficult, involving the location of some obscure river or dying inland sea. Not quite. When given an unlabeled map of the Middle East and Asia, only 12 to 14 percent of the American respondents were able to find any one of the following countries: Afghanistan, Israel, Iran or Iraq. We may soon be engaged in a war with a nation that a large majority of available recruits can't find on a map. Good thing our bombs are smart.

And the news gets worse. The attacks on the World Trade Center apparently didn't spark enough curiousity for nearly half of these young adults to bother with the buildings' location. Forty-nine percent of the American respondents failed to properly identify New York on a map of the United States where the state boundaries were outlined. And, on a map of the world, 11 percent of the Americans couldn't pinpoint the United States.

Set between two great oceans, our country has historically leaned toward insularity. But the results of this geography suggest that while Americans are not uneducable, they just don't seem to care enough to understand the world around them.

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