BIZARRE: Dumb americans - What They Never Told You

While it’s easy to look at these images and either scoff at or brush off these statements as funny, experts say geographic literacy in the United States is concerning. According to a National Geographic survey, over 11% of Americans couldn’t identify the United States on a world map. That’s right, their own country.

And if that weren’t concerning enough, over 65% couldn’t locate France or the United Kingdom on a map. In contrast, over 95% of Europeans can reportedly pinpoint the United States on an unlabeled world map, and surveys suggest that they also consistently score 20% higher than Americans when identifying countries that don’t share a border with their own.

Since geography isn’t treated as a mandatory, standalone core subject in U.S. public schools, its place in the curriculum often depends on the state. The public school system is decentralized, with more than 13,000 independent school districts, and research suggests that only around 20 states require students to take a geography course to graduate from high school.

Instead, schools often fold geography into social studies or U.S. history classes. As a result, when schools do teach the subject, lessons tend to focus heavily on domestic states and territories rather than the wider world map students elsewhere are taught to recognize.

And geography isn’t the only problem, either. Studies have pointed to gaps in the American education system, and the OECD’s PISA tests, which assess 15-year-old students worldwide in math, reading, and science, show that American students struggle to keep pace with their peers in several developed countries. 

School curricula in the United States also differ from those in other countries. In some cases, such as in math, 11th-grade algebra may cover topics that European or East Asian students learn as early as 8th grade. This difference is partly due to how the American system structures its courses.

The education system isn’t the only factor shaping Americans’ worldview, though. Another concept that helps explain this is American exceptionalism, a belief that the United States has a unique moral, economic, and political model that other countries should follow. This idea is deeply rooted in American education, politics, and media.

We can see this mindset play out online, when some Americans assume that a platform’s default language, currency, laws, or even geographical references are American. It isn’t always intentional or malicious. Sometimes, it just shows how accustomed they are to seeing American products, platforms, and companies rather than those from other countries.