American youth might be behind in geography, but I'm proud to say that I am ahead of the game in Christmas shopping. And I know what I am getting all of you.
But before I move into gift-giving season, let me pay due attention to the holiday of the week: Thanksgiving. Does anyone else find the turkey-frying phenomenon as funny as I do? In a nation known for its gargantuan credit card debt and obesity epidemic, talking heads and fluffy newspaper in-depths have nevertheless been touting the virtues of the "Turkey Day Deep-Fry."
But I have to admit, the marketing gimmick is pure genius. They have convinced this same obese, credit card-crippled culture that what it "just can't live without" this Thanksgiving is a 40-gallon steel vat, which they then must fill with 40 gallons of motor oil, or the equivalent artery-clogging agent of choice, and dunk an otherwise tasty bird into until saturated and crispy. Gobble-gobble down.
But I digress. My real announcement is that I already have all of your gifts picked out! Yep, that's right. All you 18- to 24-year-olds near and dear to my heart are already checked off my list.
You are all getting maps. Big, oversized atlases chock full of maps. Wall-size maps. Portable pocket maps. "The World For Dummies" maps.
My geographically inclined generosity stems from reading the "National Geographic-Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey."
Initially I heard it on NPR, but after drying my eyes, I went to the report and read the lurid results for myself: Americans are the biggest bunch of ignoramuses this side of the Atlantic -- or is it the Pacific -- Ocean.
Don't answer. Twenty-nine percent of American respondents couldn't point to the Pacific Ocean, according to the National Geographic Report, which polled more than 3,000 18- to 24-year-olds in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and the United States.
OK, but where we American war hawks will really shine is on the front lines of foreign conflict [insert trumpet fanfare here]! So maybe we can't pick out whether Hawaii is east or west of Los Angeles, but surely we know where the global hotspots are, where our troops have been, where the Taliban is hiding and who we've bombed the britches off of lately, right?
Wrong again. Only 17 percent of U.S. students surveyed could point to Afghanistan with their anti-terrorist index finger. Good luck with the rest of the axes of evil.
No wonder Bush is having such an easy time rallying the stateside troops against his arch nemesis Saddam -- it's hard to object to obliterating a splotch on the map when you can't even point it out.
But how about home? Land of the Free. Home of the Brave. Birthplace of the Proud-to-be-an-American bumper stickers? Where's that? I dunno. Eleven percent of American youth couldn't even point to the United States on a world map. So much for home-court advantage.
But the scariest data to come out of the survey was that, out of the nine nationalities surveyed, young people in every other country better estimated the aggregate population of the United States: 289 million. Almost one-third of the Yanks answered "between 1 and 2 billion people."
We're not just geography ignoramuses; we are geography ignoramuses with egos way bigger than our test scores.
So maybe as we sit down to our Thanksgiving feast, we need a smaller slice of all-American apple pie and a bigger helping of humble pie. Or at least placemats printed with the map of the world.
Katie Petersen is an English and biology junior. Reach her at katie.petersen@asu.edu.
