>Japanese students can't place N.Korea
>
>Wed Feb 23, 3:08 AM ET
>
>TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea (news - web sites) has menaced Japan
>with missiles, kidnapped its citizens and stands between it and a
>place in the soccer World Cup finals, but one in four Japanese
>high-school students can't place the country on a map.
>
>
>Only 76 percent of high school pupils in a survey by an academic body
>could locate the reclusive communist state, despite a daily
>bombardment of news about it in the Japanese media.
Actually that doesn't sound too bad, since you have to be at the 90th percentile of US high school seniors to locate the Mississippi River & the Rockies on an unlabeled map <http://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/web/97579.asp>:
>Twelfth-grade students near the 25th percentile could interpret maps
>that lacked accompanying text, and could use maps to locate a
>specific region. They demonstrated knowledge of basic physical
>geographic terms, and had some understanding of such physical
>phenomena as earthquakes and erosion. They demonstrated some
>understanding of the impact on populations of such factors as
>proximity and accessibility. For example, they could locate
>Spanish-speaking areas on a world map.
>
>Twelfth-grade students near the 50th percentile were able to locate
>some physical features such as United States deserts and identify
>major world religious centers. They showed such fundamental
>geographic skills as the ability to read and interpret contour maps,
>understand map projections, and read a time zone map. They were able
>to use atlases to answer fundamental physical geography questions
>relating to climate, natural vegetation, and growing seasons. And
>they demonstrated knowledge of physical reasons for land use
>patterns, understanding of such cultural phenomena as diffusion and
>migration, and some understanding of reasons for trade. For example,
>they could compare map projections to determine which showed
>accurate shapes and areas for major landmasses.
>
>Twelfth-grade students near the 90th percentile could locate and
>label such features as the Mississippi River and the Rockies on a
>cross-sectional map of the United States. They could interpret a
>wide range of visual geographical tools and could draw generally
>accurate two-dimensional maps. They could compare and assess
>information drawn from a variety of maps and other tools. They could
>understand specific examples of the interplay of society and
>environment and society and geography. They could recognize the
>economic and political importance of places such as the Suez Canal
>and demonstrated some understanding of how political unrest can
>influence economies. They could interpret a map showing language
>patterns in Africa. For example, they understood the impact of
>slavery on Caribbean demographics.