U.S. Students Ignorant of Global Affairs, Study Says

American students suffer from global illiteracy and do not understand how international affairs affect their lives, according to a study on the nation’s educational system released today.

The report, “The United States Prepares for Its Future: Global Perspectives in Education,” was drawn up by the Study Commission on Global Education headed by Clark Kerr, president emeritus of the University of California.

“We found Johnny can’t read the globe because the curriculum is deficient in any significant orientation to world affairs,” said Andrew F. Smith, president of Global Perspectives in Education Inc., the New York-based nonprofit national education organization that launched the study.

“We looked at books teachers use in classrooms and we reviewed over 100 studies and surveys dating from the early 1980s, all indicating that there was little content regarding world affairs,” he said.

“One study showed that relatively few high schools--1,300 out of 70,000--in the United States had a formal required global education component in its curriculum. Global education includes instruction about intercultural and international affairs, world geography and world history.

“Governors of 49 states have visited Japan in the last few years, yet 40% of college students surveyed could not locate Japan on a world map, according to one survey we reviewed,” Smith said.

Kerr, who joined Smith in issuing the report funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation and Exxon Education Foundation, said: “I am personally concerned to find that the majority of American public school students are globally illiterate.

“At a time when it is imperative that our next generation of leaders, corporate executives and voting electorate fully understand the challenges of the global forces at work, there is a fundamental ignorance of how one nation’s actions impact on all of us.”