Education: In Darkest Europe

The U.S. was given a geography exam by Gallup pollsters, and flunked badly. Handed a map of Europe on which countries were outlined but not named, U.S. citizens were asked to tell which was which. The wife of an Illinois school superintendent thought that Germany was France, Austria was Yugoslavia, put Bulgaria in Hungary, Rumania in Czechoslovakia and Poland in Turkey. The average U.S. woman put only five out of twelve European countries in their proper places; the average man got six right. Only one in seven knew where Bulgaria belonged.