Perhaps Beauty Pageants Should Become a Thing of the Past
Terry Trippany on Aug 27 2007 at 6:08 pm | Filed under: Culture Watch, Linkfest
Today’s Hot Stories: How Many Criminals Does Hillary Clinton Use For Fundraising? Shhhh! Teen with TB is an Illegal Immigrant
Update: The people coming up with the questions at Miss Teen USA are full of crap. This is a case of someone somewhere finding the worst possible poll result and representing it as A.) scientific and B.) representative of the American education system in full. See below for the results from the 2006 National Geographic – Roper Survey of Geographic Literacy Poll.
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This pretty much stands up on its own. The Question for 18 year old Miss Teen USA Contestant Lauren Caitlin Upton was on education.
Q. Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can’t locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?
This isn’t really fair, she obviously messed up and probably even lost track of the question; just an unfortunate bit of nerves and bad timing. I can remember when I was young, way way back, and these pageants were somewhat of a big deal. Now, not so much. Perhaps the day and age of the pageant has passed!
And this is why. The question itself is total rubbish. While Lauren Upton may have had issues articulating the answer I submit that the people coming up with these questions are as dumb as her answer appeared to be.
The 2006 National Geographic – Roper Survey of Geographic Literacy Poll found nothing so ridiculous as the claims made by the morons making up the questions at Miss Teen USA (NBC owns the pageant). In fact the National Geographic Poll found that 94% of young Americans can find the United States on the world map. (Download the whole survey here.)
Pinpointing North America on a Map Is a Breeze
Nearly all (94%) young Americans can find the United States on the world map, and Canada (92%) and Mexico (88%) are nearly as familiar. Wide majorities can find bordering bodies of water including the Pacific Ocean (79%) and the Gulf of Mexico (75%). Trends from 2002 suggest that more young adults can pick out Canada and Mexico (with few signs of change for other countries). However, it is concerning that one in ten of those with up to a high school education cannot identify the U.S., and one in five cannot find the Pacific Ocean.
So yes, it depends on the demographic but even in the worst case scenario above we are looking at 90%. The poll also showed that people who used the internet were more likely to correctly find locations on the map.
Young adults who use the Internet for news about current events around the world are more likely to pick out all ten locations correctly (23% vs. 12% overall). In fact, 40% of Internet news users know where Indonesia is, 56% can find the United Kingdom off the coast of Europe, and 50% can pick out Egypt. Likewise, respondents who say they “know more” (25%) about geography are much more likely than those who say they know the “same” (10%) or “less” (4%) to match all of the items with their location on the map. Those who report knowing “more” show an above average ability to identify the United Kingdom (55%), Egypt (48%) and Indonesia (44%) on the map.
This is just another milestone in a long line of hyper-exaggerated statistics being perpetuated and perhaps manufactured by idiots in the entertainment industry who definitely would fail a geographic study on finding their asses from a hole in the ground.
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Right Pundits, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Faultline USA, Big Dog’s Weblog, Right Truth, The Pink Flamingo, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Miss Teen USA, Lauren Caitlin Upton
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