Americans’ lack of knowledge related to geography and world events has become a bit of a joke that in today’s political climate has stopped being funny. Last year, the crew of a late-night talk show went around New York City, asking Americans to label a country on a blank world map. Not a specific country, just any country out of 195 recognized states. There were more than a few awkward silences. This is one of many examples that, especially since the 2016 election, have given the rest of the world something to laugh about. These people on tv may not represent the average American. However, recent events have shown a harsh light on the degree to which Americans are uninformed about world events, and the response has been the equivalent of an indifferent shrug.

The picture doesn’t improve when you turn to statistics. Two surveys conducted in 2006 and 2017 by National Geographic and the Council on Foreign Relations found that in 2006 three-quarters of young Americans (aged 18-24) thought English was the most widely spoken native language in the world. It’s not. It ranks behind both Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Three years after the beginning of the war in Iraq, only 37 percent of young Americans could locate that country on a map despite the attention it was getting in the media. In 2017,  a survey of 75 geography-related questions showed an  average score of 55 percent among American college students, who would be scurrying to office hours with their tails between their legs if that score counted towards their GPA.  

The problem isn’t that Americans can’t properly label a blank map or know the difference between temperate and continental climates, since a policy of forcing middle schoolers to do just this hasn’t resulted in a more aware public. The problem is geographic illiteracy- a lack of knowledge that signals, more troublingly, a lack of interest.

If you don’t know where Guatemala is on a map, chances are you’re unaware that in 1954 the United States backed a coup in Guatemala that sought to overthrow a democratically elected president with left-leaning policies. The violence and civil war that followed in Guatemala has had huge implications for immigration flows from Central America today. Knowing the location of Guatemala is the first step in grappling with complex ideas like immigration that will be at the center of 2020 debates. But you wouldn’t know this if you didn’t know where Guatemala was.

The truth is, politics don’t stop at the border; having regional context is an increasingly integral part of understanding an issue. Take Yemen, which is currently the site of the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. The same Americans who couldn’t locate Iraq when we were fighting a war there probably can’t locate Yemen now. This makes it unlikely that the average American is aware that the civil conflict in Yemen and the resulting scourges of malnutrition and cholera are exacerbated by actions of other governments vying for power in the region. It’s equally unlikely that these same Americans know that the U.S. supplied weapons to Saudi Arabia that played a role in this crisis until the senate voted against the policy in March.

This lack of understanding of basic geography becomes increasingly dangerous in a democracy where we vote for leaders who are tasked with responding to emerging situations. But instead of embracing their democratic responsibilities, it seems as if middle-class Americans, many of whom were central to the outcome of the 2016 election, are willing to evade this duty and to avoid grappling with the implications of bringing an individual to power who is equally indifferent. Engaging with the context and geography that shapes the realities of millions of people who have no say in the outcomes of these elections has become merely a nuisance. The danger isn’t limited to citizens: if you’re indifferent to the location of Syria, you’re liable to accept political and economic analysis from politicians who themselves can’t locate Syria.

Americans can afford to be ignorant, because geopolitics has little discernible effect on our daily lives. We don’t see our lives as directly impacted by a failure to engage in a larger international conversation. We are largely buffered from many of the effects of crises happening in the far-off amorphous regions that lie beyond our borders. Why bother? We can pawn off this engagement on other people.

This is a shame, because geography is a subject that has no age limit, and no prerequisite. It doesn’t require enrollment at a top university, or late nights hitting the books. It requires only curiosity, and perhaps a sense of global citizenship. We are living in a world rife with big complex problems, but turning our backs to these issues gets us no closer to solutions. There are areas for incremental progress in our own lives and communities. We need not bear the burden of these global issues alone, but in choosing to engage, we are taking one small step towards understanding the issues and forcing our leaders to understand these issues too. So if you find that you’re ready to reengage, feel free to start with the survey linked above. Don’t worry about your score. The bar is exceptionally low. There are no failing grades.