The Nation - News from Oct. 30, 1987

Education Secretary William J. Bennett complained that American students have “a woeful lack of grasp” of geography and recommended to a congressional panel that the subject be taught alongside history and civics. Bennett cited a series of recent surveys all showing basically the same results--that American students know little about the geography of their own country and even less about the land and people of other countries. “Geography,” Bennett told the Senate subcommittee on education, arts and humanities, “was something of a casualty of educational innovation.”