And someone who agrees with us both:
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Most of you are probably sick to death of hearing Miss Teen USA Contestant Lauren Caitlin Upton stumble over a simple response to a seemingly benign question about geography. But after two whole days of watching the video and subsequent commentary take over the internet, TV and radio spectrum I think it's time to expose the question for the fraud that it is.
The question to Upton was stated as follows:
Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can't locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?
I immediately suspected the veracity of the question from the moment I heard it. Recent Polls? What polls? I found this pretty hard to believe.
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So I did a little research and couldn't come up with any poll that led me to this claim. Perhaps it was because most searches were being supplanted by people who had posted on Upton's primetime train wreck. Perhaps it is because such polls don't exist except in some obscure context; a one off poll that can be used as an underhanded swipe against the American education system.
I did however find a authoritative poll by National Geographic that pretty much decimates the Miss Teen USA claim. In fact the 2006 National Geographic - Roper Survey of Geographic Literacy Poll (GfK) stated explicitly that "Pinpointing North America on a Map Is a Breeze" and found that 94% of young Americans can find the United States on the world map. For those staffers at Miss Teen USA that are mathematically challenged that's only 6%, a far cry from the 20% number they are using.
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http://newsbusters.org/blogs/terry-t...raphy-question
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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel
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