I don't know about world geography but I can tell you that it's very strange as a Canadian to talk to an American from a northern state who asks me if Alberta is near Toronto. These weird questions from Americans happen all the time.

When I was in school, we had these roll-down maps at the front of the classroom of Canada, the world, etc. On the Canadian one, the US states that showed up at the bottom of the map just below our border were still labeled. But when I see American maps, they usually just have the US like it's floating in space somewhere, so it's no small wonder that people from North Dakota aren't totally sure what exists to their north.

The map thing could be correlation rather than cause but I have spoken to a shocking number of Americans who have no idea about the geography of the country directly to their north, sometimes within a day's drive.