Concrete example, for anyone who didn't get their primary education in the USA: In the school system I went to, "world history" really meant, "post-Renaissance European history." China and India never really entered the stage. But the East India Company did, which did make it necessary to at least acknowledge their existence in passing.

edited to add: That said, I get the GP's point about excessive self-flagellation, and agree that it's OK to cut people some slack for not having a super-precise grasp of the local geography in places they'll probably never go. When I see major cities that lie within just a few kilometers of US borders described as, e.g., "Toronto, Canada" instead of "Toronto, Ontario", though, I still wonder.

What percentage of people outside the US will know the name or location of more than a few US states? I'd bet it's extraordinarily low. I'd bet less than 1% of the world's adult population can name more than six US states. My experience has been, educated people I know from Europe struggle to do a lot better than that. Point them out on a map? Forget about it beyond the obvious or famous ones like California, Florida, Alaska (near Russia), Hawaii (island), Texas (they know it's big and in the middle), maybe NY, and a select few others. US states have the population and economies of European nations. Americans are unfairly criticized for supposedly not being able to name or locate a lot of other countries. The rest of the world can't name or locate US states either. Why? Because it doesn't matter to their lives. A few of my friends from Romania didn't know where Crimea was, because it wasn't something that mattered to them previously until the conflict. Ask someone from Bulgaria or Belarus which state is Alabama, they generally won't know because it doesn't make much sense for them to learn that.

> US states have the population and economies of European nations. Americans are unfairly criticized for supposedly not being able to name or locate a lot of other countries.

Most US states are culturally and historically insignificant. The comparison between European countries with thousand years of history to most of the US states is lacking.

There are more US states than European countries, which have an older history and an overall larger population.

I am writing this without any intention to take away from the important US states. I am just looking at the bottom half here.

FYI, I quoted you below, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18742737.

To be fair, as an American I don't even need to go to Europe to prove how little non-US geography I know. I can't even name or point to any Mexican or Canadian regions except for British Colombia

Everyone heard of Beautiful British Columbia, that's where I live, after all :D

Maybe you've heard of Quebec?

Ive heard of Quebec and Sesq... however you spell it, but BC is the only one I could point to on a map

India is not as important on the world stage and as relevant to as many other nations as the U.S.A. or China are. And China's provinces are not as independent and as relevant as America's states. China is much more centralized.

The states aren't just provinces. It's not happenstance that they are constantly talked about.

Hell, it's in the bloody name of the country.

What good does it actually do to know just the names from memory. Without any context they are rather useless. I dont think many people from the EU have to much to say about most US states except their names, if even that.

I think most people from the EU could also name provinces or states where conflict with the central government exists on a larger scale or where people are at odds with the central government. I assume quite a few people will know of Kashmir for example. Just as you are unlikely to know the names of states for for example Germany, except maybe Bavaria, but for Spain you will likely have heard of Catalonia. And you will likely also know about what actually happens there instead just iterating through remembered terms for regions.

> What good does it actually do to know just the names from memory. Without any context they are rather useless.

Point is if you don't know any names, you don't know any context either.

I would argue, that you inadvertently learn the names once you learn of the context. I would see it more as a filing system. If there is nothing it points to, whats the benefit of knowing it in the first place.

This is just a syllogism. Context -> names. !names -> !context.

So we can tell that a guy who hasn't heard of eigenvectors (name) doesn't know much about linear algebra (context).

I think the analogy lacks. You can know quite a bit of for example the Kurdish conflict in Turkey without knowing the names of the Turkish sates in question. The province centric approach is one of the major problems that foreign powers faced in for example Afghanistan or Iraq, where the cultural spheres dont align with province borders. As a worst case, what good does it do if you know the name of the province but brought a translator speaking the wrong language.

A similar argument could maybe be made for voting preferences /political leanings of the different regions in the US to give a more practical example.

But yes that is rebutting my last comment. You dont necessarily learn the state names by learning the context.

I don’t need to know the names of Chinease subdivisions to know most people live on the eastern side, the west is dry to the north and mountains to the south etc.

Knowing similar things about the US tells you the area Texas covers is dryer than average even if you don’t know the name Texas.

Punjab, Szechuan, Hunan, if they've opened a restaurant, we know it.

Can students outside the US name Indian states or Chinese provinces? I assumed that was a general "west not thinking about the east enough" problem.

Anecdotally about 100% of foreigners I work with know roughly where NYC and LA are. 50% on top of that know where Chicago roughly is. My sampling is based on every foreigner I meet asking where I'm from. St. Louis. Which few know, so I use Chicago. Most think Chicago is dead center though and are happy when I teach them to use the bottom left of the lakes as a clue.

Americans live Chinese food, and from that: Sichuan Hunan Canton

Sichuan, Tamil Nadu ?

I think most somewhat educated people could.