http://mediationchannel.com/2005/12/04/geography-has-made-us-neighbors-the-importance-of-geographic-literacy-in-the-21st-century/ Talking about mediation, negotiation, conflict resolution, and law Mon, 17 May 2010 12:20:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mediationchannel.com/2005/12/04/geography-has-made-us-neighbors-the-importance-of-geographic-literacy-in-the-21st-century/#comment-1217 Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:46:00 +0000 http://mediationchannel.com/2005/12/04/geography-has-made-us-neighbors-the-importance-of-geographic-literacy-in-the-21st-century/#comment-1217 There’s an interesting article there at Nationmaster.com about debunking some of the Western myths and preconceptions of the third world. Because I stay in a ‘third world’ country, I do find it interesting how many people in the first world don’t understand what is going on in the rest of the world. Here, in South Africa, we have a notable third world mixed with pockets of first world. But there is a huge amount of development going on.Admittedly, I saw photo’s and video clips of friends that went to Eastern Europe and Egypt the other day and it is also almost mind blowing for me to see how well developed some of these countries are. TV has probably given us the wrong conceptions of what the world looks like…

]]> http://mediationchannel.com/2005/12/04/geography-has-made-us-neighbors-the-importance-of-geographic-literacy-in-the-21st-century/#comment-1216 Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:13:00 +0000 http://mediationchannel.com/2005/12/04/geography-has-made-us-neighbors-the-importance-of-geographic-literacy-in-the-21st-century/#comment-1216 This is by no means an insult to Americans, only a story to illustrate the point of how bad this can get.A friend of mine from South Africa toured the states with his band many years ago, and were staying at various people’s houses who were glad to host them. One family took them in, and the father of the family was a qualified Chartered Accountant.After some conversation, this CA turned to my friend and asked him an embarrassing question. He asked him how long it took them to ‘drive’ from South Africa to the States.For some reason, he thought South Africa was a drivable distance away from America? And this a qualified Chartered Accountant! Needless to say, my friend was a little perplexed and tried his best to answer the question without insulting him… which, you may agree, was incredibly difficult…

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