In secondary school, I may have come bottom of the class in Physics and Chemistry but I was always top in Geography. It was a branch of knowledge that energised me. I cared about mountains, rivers, countries, oceans and capital cities and I still do. When I was thirteen I knew the capital city of every single country in the world and I still know the majority of them but must admit that I haven't kept up to date with all the changes.
It is interesting to me that plenty of people do not seem to care about Geography. Does it really matter that Mount Everest is in The Himalayas or that Sacramento is the state capital of California or that Africa isn't just one big country? For many this is clearly all tiresome, irrelevant knowledge.
Here's Jay Leno in 2017 interviewing American high school students in order to test their geographical knowledge:-
The results are both funny and alarming but perhaps not surprising for there is a lot of geographical ignorance out there. Maybe the young people Jay Leno quizzed know other things that matter more to them.
Another person who has recently demonstrated that she is geographically challenged is the British Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss. She confused The Baltic Sea with The Black Sea and thought that Rostov was in Ukraine. It was most embarrassing. Surely one of the qualities we should look for in a Foreign Secretary is a good understanding of world geography.
If I was posing as a journalist at a press conference I would ask Ms Truss these questions:
- What is the capital of Romania?
- What is India's southernmost state?
- What is the tallest mountain in South America?
And if she didn't get them right I would ask easier questions at the next press conference, such as:-
- What is the capital of France?
- In which English county is Land's End?
- What is the biggest state in America by land area?
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/zyRAbDn
