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From: Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: [OT] Brits try to identify the 50 US states on a map
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2025 19:32:19 -0500
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On 2025-02-05 6:07 PM, anim8rfsk wrote:
> Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
>> On 2025-02-05 10:21 AM, suzeeq wrote:
>>> On 2/5/2025 5:57 AM, Rhino wrote:
>>>> If you're in the mood for a bit of a laugh, you might like this video.
>>>> Several teams of two Brits are given a map showing the 50 US states
>>>> and are then given 10 minutes to label all of them. (They are also
>>>> given a list of the states). They made some surprising guesses.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9GNf51_NvU [9 minutes]
>>>>
>>>> Several other videos in the same vein show up on my recommended list.
>>>> I also saw one where Americans tried to pronounce British place names
>>>> (NOT the easy ones like "London"), and another where Brits tried to
>>>> pronounce American place names (again, NOT the easy ones). They're all
>>>> in good fun.
>>>>
>>>> I like to think I could label quite a lot of the US states correctly
>>>> but I know I'd have trouble with some. Then again, I'm not sure if
>>>> most Americans would get them all correct either ;-)
>>>
>>> I'd have a hard time placing all the English shires in the correct
>>> place, or even larger cities like Leeds and Birmingham. And I've looked
>>> up some of them on google maps.
>>
>> You'd do better than me then! I can point to a few places that I've been
>> but if you asked me where Lincolnshire is or what was in it, I'd have to
>> look all of that up. Mind you, I understand the shires have no political
>> significance at all: they don't function like states with their own
>> governments. There are really just two levels of government, the federal
>> government and local "councils" whose boundaries are not based on the
>> shires.
>>
>> What about the 50 states? Could you label all of them correctly given a
>> blank map?
> 
> That was actually something we had to do as a test in either late grade
> school or early high school.
> 
> So I could’ve done it 55 years ago, but I doubt I’d get more than half of
> them now. I’d be able to fill in the borders like doing a jigsaw puzzle,
> but the middle would remain empty.
> 
> This is the perfect example of the stuff we complained about learning in
> school that we would never ever need to know and we were right.
> 
I wonder if we were wise beyond our years or just too lazy to want to 
work that hard for something that didn't seem useful to know....

In any case it really isn't particularly useful to be able to identify 
all 50 states EXCEPT for random quizzes like this one. Education systems 
should not be geared towards teaching useless stuff.
> 
> I think we're from the generation that actually had geography
>> in school and learned that kind of thing but I have reason to doubt that
>> the current generation of school children - and maybe the previous
>> generation or two as well - got that same information.
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Rhino