Congressional Aptitude Test

I found this on the Web recently.

www.rethinkingschools.org/just_fun/games/mapgame.html

It's an interactive quiz that checks to see if you can identify the countries of North Africa, the Middle East and southwest Asia.

I got my butt kicked, though I could identify Iraq and Kuwait, among others, so that's not shameful. Syria gave me trouble. Western Ethiopia is a complete mystery, and Bahrain? Don't get me started. I wonder how many of the protesters against the war could correctly label 33% of these countries, or for that matter how many of the soldiers who died in this Iraq war could.

It's a darn shame, and it's also a tremendous example of what news on the Web could be doing -- educating people, instead of pandering to them.

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