1/5 of Polled Americans Could Not Find the United States on Map

And let's not forget pResident Bush:



While those Online Googlers laugh at Miss Teen USA 2007 contestant, Lauren Caitlin Upton's, less than stellar ability to answer the question delivered to her, perhaps we should spend some time bemoaning the state of education in the United States that caused 1/5 of the Americans polled unable to locate the U.S. on a map that prompted the question in the first place!

This is not the first instance of American stupidity. Australian comedy television programming has clearly demonstrated Americans inability to identify world figures, world events and general geography. And then there are those who were totally unable to identify Iraq on the map, while simultaneously calling for the destruction of the country and its people; the very zenith of arrogance, bigotry and stupidity. And what of the Americans left dumbfounded when asked to name a country beginning with the letter "U". (View Part I, Part II, Part III) Have we, as Americans, really become so stupid? or is there a bigger design at work here? Of course, we understand that only the responses showing the ignorant were strung together, but that Americans could not answer such fundamental questions about their world is disturbing.

I would encourage you to explore the work of Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. Miss Iserbyt was the Senior Policy advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the Reagan administration. What she discovered caused her to resign her position and create a book of documents that she took with her when she vacated the post. Her work is called The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, and is a must read for anyone truly interested in knowing why our children are finishing high school with an education that falls far short of quality. An Online version of the book can be downloaded for free here.

One may ask why a government should want to purposefully dumb down its populace. Although, the answer is multifaceted, one need only to look to the dictatorial regimes of Stalin and Hitler - to name only two. One of the first orders of business for any dictatorship is to remove the intelligentsia and academics. By systematically dumbing down the population the need to forcefully remove these blockades to dictatorial rule is greatly lessened, and the population is indoctrinated into a worker class that does little to question those that they believe to have rule over them. And in so doing, fail to remember that the American government was created to give the rule to the people and not those in public service, who are to do nothing more than carry out the will of the people.

And as a final thought... our UK counterparts aren't doing so well either. The Telegraph reported that 2008 will bring exams with softer questions for students to puzzle through (read).

FOLLOW UP: For several days now, I have tried without success to discover the poll cited. I have sent an email to Miss Teen U.S.A. headquarters and await a response.

UPDATE 9.27.2007: I have still been unable to find the source for the question offered by Miss Teen U.S.A. I'm wondering if the "real" question could have been "One out of Five Americans can't find Iraq on a map, why do you think this is so?" There seem to be statistics to support this question while none to support the former.

The Exiled American
Ray Zweidinger-Pohjola