How Americans See Europe

Source: Enchanted Learnin

One of my favorite time wasting websites, BuzzFeed, had a humorous post about Americans trying to label a map of Europe. And as funny as some of the maps were one person labeled England as Benedict Cumberbatch's House, another labeled Hungary as Middle Earth, and another labeled Portugal as Spain's Butt. Most left a lot spaces blank and some put the same county name in multiple spots.


Source: Buzz Feed

This video was painful....

As funny as this is it does raise an issue I believe should be taken more seriously. Some of these people wrote on their maps "I went to college!" or "I have my Masters". We now have a global economy and as technology increases the world becomes smaller. Today's high school graduates will have to compete with other kids from China, India, and Europe. America is one of the very few countries that most people only speak one language. Other countries are fluent in at least two if not three or four languages. Americans except everyone else to not only learn English but be completely fluent. If we as Americans expect to be taken seriously we need to brush up on our world history/geography. I know when I was in public school any mention of history that did not solely include the United States was not addressed until my junior year in high school and even then it was brief. Our news coverage is only global when it may directly affect us. The recent issues with the Ukraine only became mainstream when the U.S. government threatened to intervene. Our stance, as the public, on global issues would be greatly more intellectual if we knew where maybe half the European countries were located.

Oh in case you were wondering....