A Solution for the Geographically Impaired

Americans are notorious for their shaky-to-nonexistent grasp of basic geography (although I have some doubts as to whether a stockbroker from Melbourne would be any more adept at locating Azerbijian than your average New Yorker). Are you feeling a little skittish about your own geographical prowess? Then go here (thanks, Dad!) to try your luck at a variety of geography quizzes, which are very effective in increasing your knowledge of geography. You should probably start with the basics: the states of the U.S., then maybe the continents and oceans of the world. If you want to test your knowledge of current events or, more likely, enhance your comprehension of the daily news, try the Middle East. You will see that there are a variety of quizzes available, so if you're really up for a challenge, try something like China. You never know when you might become an analyst for The Economist and need to know these things.

Get your kids going on this! Whenever I do any American states quiz, my mind sees a puzzle I had as a kid, in which each state was a carefully shaped puzzle piece of a different color. California will always and forever be orange, and Wyoming yellow. That puzzle was one of the best learning toys I ever had, in part because the states were accurately shaped, not turned into rounded-off vague suggestions of the real thing. Being able to handle each state helped me absorb their unique shapes, so that geography quizzes about the U.S. have never been a problem for me. In this day and age, though, kids do nearly all of their learning on the computer (well, our kids do an awful lot of it there). These geography quizzes are a great way to add to that arsenal of learning tools.

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