It is very hard these days to find an American who knows their way around a map of their own country, let alone a globe; geography has just never been considered important in the American educational curriculum. Maybe it's because America holds so many beautiful geographical features within its parentheses shaped coasts, or maybe it plays hand in hand with the lack of interest most Americans have in international affairs, but most Americans barely have any desire to know whats outside their borders. In light of recent events, our citizens are being bombarded with city names they can't pronounce that are in countries they didn't care enough about before and confronted with actually having to remember where their grocer is from in relation to their dry cleaner. With wars, global economic crises, and terrorists cave hopping through jungle and desert territories; it should begin to be in America's better interest to introduce geography lessons into it's core curriculum.

America is a very diverse country; to quote a Bill Murray line from the movie Stripes, “We're American...That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse.” We have more then our fair share of culture in this country, and are a self-proclaimed melting pot of immigrant traditions. But for a country full of people from other countries, our lack of geographic knowledge is downright petrifying. For most of the country, there is no need to pass down an international culture or tradition to our kids, which is why we don't need to tell them where our family comes from. But for first generation Americans, it isn't easy to pass down these traditions when our children are not taking the necessary lessons in their schools to learn where they are from, which is leading to a loss of cultural identity. Vice versa, in order for most kids to have a firm understanding of their backgrounds, they would need to lose their American identity. In any event, coping with this identity crisis makes children stronger, but also takes away from their understanding of their surroundings or their true heritage.

These days, television shows like The Tonight Show travel the country and ridicule their countrymen for their lack of knowledge in things such as geography and current events; easy questions that we would normally consider common knowledge. It is somewhat funny, and obviously not everyone is expected to know everything, but there is also a degree of sadness to it as well. The sadness isn't so much in the ridicule, but it is when they bring on an immigrant who is expected to fail but does much better then the Americans. Other countries have much more thorough and in-depth public school curriculums, or at the least they have a heavier focus on geography; and these immigrants who we take for granted could probably teach us a thing or two about education.

If the exam which immigrants must take in order to be naturalized into American citizens wasn't so hard, this issue would most likely never matter. It is a common fact that this exam is nearly impossible for the average American to pass, and has been called unethical by many people. Most Americans don't vote and pay very little attention to who is actually leading their district, county or state; but any aspiring citizen must know all of these things as well as trivial facts from America's history and what the symbols on the flag mean. It is understandable, since the country doesn't want just anybody to be naturalized, but maybe American's should start studying their globe before market globalization makes them take a test to become citizens of the world.