Sorry Anonymous, for some reason, I totally missed your post.

I have a good one. I travelled to Missouri ( sp?) for a health related course. I met up with several physical therapists from Oklahoma who were on the same course. When I told one girl that I was from the east coast of Canada, she said," ...so you needed special permission to come here ?" I asked what she meant, thinking she was referring to my company, and she said, I kid you not, "well isn't Canada like Russia, and you need special permission to come into the US ?"
What do you say to that...and she has a university degree...

Rachel - The general public seems to think that every city/town in New York State is a suburb of NYC! I live in Buffalo and people constantly assume that it is right next to NYC. It is 7 hrs away!

Also, I've been to Belize and people are always asking where's that? Is that in Africa? A funny comment that I heard while watching the opening ceremony of the olympics - the Belize athletes started their procession and Bob Costas made reference to the "the island nation of Belize" Belize has islands, but since when is the entire nation an island?!

To those posters bemoaning the "fact" that geography is not taught in elementary school should have been at my house last night as I quizzed my 6th grader on all capitals, major cities, and physical attributes of all 50 states last night. This while my husband helped the 3rd grader with her diorama of Colorado. The study of geography is alive and well at our school.

Something which tickles me, I have no idea why, but Europeans forget or don't understand how large of an area the United States covers.

GoTravel, that is so true. Europeans are used to driving a few hours and being in another country. I think it's difficult to fathom what these US distances really mean.

Americans, on the other hand, must take the prize for most geographically challenged relative to their level of education. I'll never forget a road trip just after college with 2 friends of mine, both graduates from a prestigious Ivy League school. They both went on to numerous advanced degrees as well, so intelligence was NOT the issue. At the age of 21, however, they could not fill out half the states correctly on a blank US map we received as our placemats in a restaurant.

As for misconceptions, I had no idea St. Petersburg (Russia) was physically (the architecture, the canals, the bridges, the monuments) such a beautiful city.

I was at a Mexican resort and it was game night...we were playing group Scattegories. We had to come up with a country beginning with "B". We said Belize. We were not given credit because it apparently doesn't exist. We argued that it was only a couple hundred miles away, but no, the 5 or 6 resort workers running the game had never even heard of it!

A had a friend who taught in Albania. Her students thought there was a bridge connecting Europe to America. They didn't believe her when she said no.

I had a very nice black guy (since deceased, sadly) who I employed part time for big mailings. I could never convince him that Hawaii and New Mexico weren't foreign countries so I snuck in early to the shop and mailed those out early so that he wouldn't put them in the foreign mail pile.

Oh, Lord Shane... you are sure to unleash the PC's with THAT comment!

TX, what's un-pc about Shane's comment?

I'm a map nerd and have always loved geography.

My favorite software is DeLorne Street Atlas that is much more advanced than anything else on the market. I got it from my GIS department at work.

The story could be considered un-PC because Shane mentioned the man's race even though it had nothing to do with the story. The assumption could be that because he mentioned the man's race, Shane believes that it had something to do with his lack of geographical knowledge.

Everyone refers to college graduates who make these comments. I think you will find that things will get worse not better in the future because of standardized testing. Many grammar schools are no longer teaching anything other than reading, writing, and mathematics because of the time needed to prepare the students for required high stakes testing.

Anytime I have referred to someone's race, when it really was not relevant to the statement, I have been flamed by other people on this board.
Like "Why do you mention he was Black?" and "Only a racist would add that he was Black" and much worse...
It's an innocent comment that usually enrages some Fororites.

Okay, I see now.

Thank you, JCorrea.

shaz, I am a college grad (BA) and I do know my geography 'cause I am a map nerd.

TxTravelPro, perhaps Shane meant no harm by his comment and in that sense it was "innocent." But ask yourself this: If the man Shane described had been Caucasian, would Shane have told the story "I had a very nice white guy..."

I think not. Therefore there is an implication that the man's race is a factor in his being uneducated or dumb. Otherwise why mention it? Would it make any sense to say "I had a very nice tall guy..." No.

I've had clients who thought that Bermuda was off the California coast, and one who was certain that there was a tunnel from Europe to Iceland so she could drive there. People still think that Hawaii is only a short flight from California, and the question I used to get the most (while living on Maui) was, "how do I drive from here to that island over there (meaning Lanai)?" When I told them the pontoons on the car didn't work, they would just stare at me with their mouths agape...

Geography hasn't been taught in most public schools for over 20 years, so is it any wonder that people don't know that North America is not just the USA? And that they can't drive to Europe from here?

Not too long ago I had a rather heated argument with a supposedly intelligent friend who insisted that all rivers flow north to south, otherwise they'd be flowing uphill which is impossible!

And back to the original statement. Yes, if I'm not mistaken there have been posts right here in the past where people were asking which Disney World hotels had the best ocean front beaches. So, of course, I believe the story.

bennnie, What state do you live in? Is the geography part of a social science program?

Because the schools where I am focus on math and science much more than the social sciences, I try to get my grandkids a software program, puzzle, game or anything that includes a base knowledge of geographic information. Some never get any geography after 5th to 7th grade. Sometimes it works. Also I make sure that they know all the state capitals from a game we play. But even Risk, gives you the continents and a lot of basic country locations.

Seems like the college crowd has forgotten a lot of the geography that they did know.