Geographic Illiteracy High, but Games are World of Help
By ANNE REEKS - January 9, 2003

Would you point to Iraq on a world map -- without the help of country labels? Or Israel? What about Afghanistan?

If you're like most of the 18- to 24-year-olds who took part in the National Geographic-Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey, the answer is no, no and no.

Less than 15 percent of the U.S. participants correctly identified Iraq and Israel, despite their high profile in the news. Only 17 percent of all 3,000 participants (also from Canada, Europe, Japan, Mexico and Sweden) located Afghanistan, according to the survey.

Gluttons for punishment can see more results and try to answer the questions at www.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey.

But the question that's really hard to answer is what to do about geographic illiteracy. The National Geographic Society is going to get business, education and media leaders together sometime this year to tackle the problem.

Meanwhile, it can't hurt to encourage children to feed their endless appetite for trivia and computer games with some geographically oriented fare. At the very least, the younger ones might do better in the 2016 survey.

Mission Possible World Geography (Age 10 and up, EdVenture Software, $30, Win/MAC, www.edven.com). The latest title from a tiny software company takes on the world, one factoid at a time. Which is a province of Canada? Bratislava is in what country? Part of the Rockies goes through which state? Part of the Mediterranean borders which country?

By answering multiple-choice questions, players advance their mission: to repair a computer at a remote weather research base before it melts down and nukes a nearly complete cure for global warming.

With each quick, correct answer, an agent climbs steep cliffs, fends off fierce creatures and overcomes other obstacles to reach the complex, get inside, install a cooling chip, download data and bring it back to civilization. The action is impressively 3-D, but children don't interact with it other than fueling progress with accurate answers.

While its content is largely disjointed nuggets of information, there is plenty of identifying countries (also capitals, natural features and landmarks) on unlabeled maps. Little time is wasted on just-for-fun elements.

John Crandall, president of EdVenture Software, based in Connecticut, said he didn't want game-playing to obscure the subject matter.

"I wanted the kids to get something right away," said Crandall, not 15 minutes into it. He recently quit teaching to work full time in his 5-year-old "me, myself and I" company, which mainly targets the school market.

Another EdVenture Software title, GeoCycle USA, for ages 7-12, covers the 50 states via a bike-riding odyssey.

Anne Reeks is a Houston freelance writer, software reviewer and contributing editor to Parenting magazine.

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