Is Gilman that Great at Geography? 

Gilman School prides itself on being one of the top places in the nation for young men to be educated in mind, body, and spirit. Although these three fields are important, there is one other that surely stands far higher, and is far superior to the rest: basic geographic knowledge. How can one declare Gilman to be such an excellent school if we do not know how competent our students are at Geography? 

To answer this burning question, The News constructed a survey and administered it to ten random students, with an equal distribution by grade level. The survey, meant to test geographic knowledge, consisted of two sections. The first was designed to measure world geographic knowledge by showing the contestants a map with one country shaded in and then asking participants to name that country. The second section tested knowledge of U.S. geography by asking students to name as many states as possible in under 10 minutes without a map.

For the world geography portion of the survey, Gilman students performed above the average for both the average American adult and student. In our survey, the 5 countries that had to be identified were purposely chosen to reflect a wide range of difficulty. These countries were: Mexico (easy), Vietnam (medium), Albania (difficult), Slovenia (very difficult), and the Central African Republic (impossible). According to a 2006 National Geographic study, 88% of American students can point out Mexico; for Gilman, that number is 100%. Surprisingly, 90% of the Gilman students surveyed also correctly identified Vietnam on the map, likely far above the national average. Although no hard numbers exist for a national average, a 2017 New York Times study found that many Americans commonly confuse the two countries of North Korea and Vietnam on a map. Moving on to the harder countries, in the Gilman survey 40% got Albania, 20% got Slovenia, and surprisingly one person actually got the C.A.R. These results, especially the significant proportion of students that can identify Albania, are impressive compared to national averages, as a GoCompare Travel study of British and American adults identified Albania as the second hardest country in Europe for the Americans to name, meanwhile nearly half of Gilman participants could identify it. 

Although knowledge of random countries in the world is not necessarily essential to life as a functional adult, knowledge of obscure U.S. states is far, far more important. According to the survey (outliers removed), the average Gilman student can name slightly more than 40 of the 50 U.S. states without a map. However, not a single student in the survey correctly identified all 50 of the states. This number is below most national averages; figures for the percentage of Americans who can identify all 50 U.S. states range wildly, from 2% according to Buzzfeed to 45% according to the map-guessing website Sporcle. Especially for the 45% figure, it is important to remember that the individuals actively and voluntarily using the internet to take these quizzes are likely to be those who are interested in and enjoy geography, making these quizzes less representative of the total American population.

The data also tells an interesting story when examining which states were the most and least identified. Thankfully, all participants were able to remember Maryland, as well as Texas, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, Alaska, Maine, and Florida. The least identified states were Minnesota, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Tennessee. 

While Gilman’s students’ geographic knowledge can’t directly speak to the quality of the school, one can infer from these impressive results that Gilman students are interested in geopolitics and are actively learning about the external world. Traits such as these are, unlike geographic knowledge, becoming increasingly important in a more interconnected society and world economic system in which foreign events as well as events across state lines have an ever greater impact on us. Well done, Gilman!