{"id":6348,"date":"2013-08-19T13:18:30","date_gmt":"2013-08-19T20:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6348"},"modified":"2013-08-19T13:18:30","modified_gmt":"2013-08-19T20:18:30","slug":"dont-know-much-about-geography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dont-know-much-about-geography\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Know Much About Geography"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0Tribune Media Services<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

In\u00a0Sam Cooke’s\u00a0classic 1959 hit “Wonderful World,” the lyrics downplayed formal learning with lines like, “Don’t know much about history … Don’t know much about geography.”<\/p>\n

Over a half-century after Cooke wrote that lighthearted song, such ignorance is now all too real. Even our best and brightest — or rather our elites especially — are not too familiar with history or geography.<\/p>\n

Both disciplines are the building blocks of learning. Without awareness of natural and human geography, we are reduced to a sort of self-contained void without accurate awareness of the space around us. An ignorance of history also creates the same sort of self-imposed exile, leaving us ignorant of both what came before us and what is likely to follow.<\/p>\n

In the case of geography,\u00a0Harvard Law School\u00a0graduate\u00a0Barack Obama\u00a0recently lectured that, “If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places likeCharleston, South Carolina; or\u00a0Savannah, Georgia; or\u00a0Jacksonville, Florida\u00a0…” The problem is that all the examples he cited are cities on the\u00a0East Coast, not the\u00a0Gulf of Mexico. If Obama does not know where these ports are, how can he deepen them?<\/p>\n

Obama’s geographical confusion has become habitual. He once claimed that he had been to all “57 states.” He also assumed that\u00a0Kentucky\u00a0was closer toArkansas\u00a0than it was to his adjacent home state of\u00a0Illinois.<\/p>\n

In reference to the\u00a0Falkland Islands, President Obama called them the\u00a0Maldives– islands southwest of\u00a0India\u00a0— apparently in a botched effort to use the Argentine-preferred\u00a0Malvinas. The two island groups may sound somewhat alike, but they are continents apart. Again, without basic geographical knowledge, the president’s commentary on the Falklands is rendered superficial.<\/p>\n

When in the state of\u00a0Hawaii, Obama announced that he was in “Asia.” He lamented that the\u00a0U.S. Army’s\u00a0Arabic-language translators assigned to\u00a0Iraqcould better be used in\u00a0Afghanistan, failing to recognize that Arabic isn’t the language of\u00a0Afghanistan. And for that matter, he apparently thought Austrians speak a language other than German.<\/p>\n

The president’s geographical illiteracy is a symptom of the nation’s growing ignorance of once-essential subjects like geography and history. The former is often not taught any more as a required subject in our schools and colleges. The latter has often been redefined as race, class and gender oppression to score melodramatic points in the present rather than to learn from the tragedy of the past.<\/p>\n

The president in his 2009\u00a0Cairo\u00a0speech credited the European Renaissance and Enlightenment to Islam’s “light of learning” — an exaggeration if not an outright untruth on both counts.<\/p>\n

Closer to home, the president claimed in 2011 that the\u00a0Texas\u00a0had historically been Republican — while in reality it was a mostly Jim Crow Democratic state for over a century. Republicans only started consistently carrying\u00a0Texas\u00a0after 1980.<\/p>\n

Recently, Obama claimed that 20th century communist strongman\u00a0Ho Chi Minh”was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of\u00a0Thomas Jefferson.” That pop assertion is improbable, given that Ho systematically liquidated his opponents, slaughtered thousands in land-redistribution schemes, and brooked no dissent.<\/p>\n

Even more ahistorical was Vice President\u00a0Joe Biden’s\u00a0suggestion that\u00a0George W. Bush\u00a0should have gone on television in 2008 to address the nation asPresident Roosevelt\u00a0had done in 1929 — a time when there was neither aPresident Roosevelt\u00a0nor televisions available for purchase. In 2011, a\u00a0White House\u00a0press kit confused\u00a0Wyoming\u00a0with\u00a0Colorado\u00a0— apparently because they’re both rectangular-shaped states out West.<\/p>\n

Our geographically and historically challenged leaders are emblematic of disturbing trends in American education that include a similar erosion in grammar, English composition and basic math skills.<\/p>\n

The controversial\u00a0Lois Lerner, a senior official at the\u00a0IRS\u00a0— an agency whose stock and trade are numbers — claimed that she was “not good at math” when she admitted that she did not know that one-fourth of 300 is 75.<\/p>\n

In the zero-sum game of the education curriculum, each newly added therapeutic discipline eliminated an old classical one. The result is that if Americans emote more and have more politically correct thoughts on the environment, race, class and gender, they are less able to advance their beliefs through fact-based knowledge.<\/p>\n

Despite supposedly tough new standards and vast investments, about 56 percent of students in recent\u00a0California\u00a0public school tests did not perform up to their grade levels in English. Only about half met their grade levels in math.<\/p>\n

A degree from our most prestigious American university is no guarantee that such a graduate will know the number of states or the location of\u00a0Savannah. If we wonder why the\u00a0Ivy League-trained Obama seems confused about where cities, countries and continents are, we might remember that all but one\u00a0Ivy League\u00a0university eliminated their geography departments years ago.<\/p>\n

As a rule now, when our leaders allude to a place or an event in the past, just assume their references are dead wrong.<\/p>\n

(Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0is a classicist and historian at the\u00a0Hoover Institution,Stanford University. His new book, “The Savior Generals,” has just been released by\u00a0Bloomsbury Press. You can reach him by e-mailingauthor@victorhanson.com<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\n(C) 2013 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0Tribune Media Services In\u00a0Sam Cooke’s\u00a0classic 1959 hit “Wonderful World,” the lyrics downplayed formal learning with lines like, “Don’t know much about history … Don’t know much about geography.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[194,99],"tags":[12,414],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Eo","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10934,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rethinking-the-geography-of-power\/","url_meta":{"origin":6348,"position":0},"title":"Rethinking the Geography of Power","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Where the seats of power are located matters. Given the populist revolt in the United States and Europe against the so-called global elite, it is time to refigure the geography of governmental and transnational power. Take the United Nations. Much of the international body\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "United Nations"","block_context":{"text":"United Nations","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/united-nations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5281,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/this-is-your-wake-up-call\/","url_meta":{"origin":6348,"position":1},"title":"This is Your Wake-up Call","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Jared Diamond can't find the key to superior civilization. by Bruce S. 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