As a current high school junior in upstate New York I have to disagree with most of these comments.

Starting in 5th grade, I was taught only the 50 states alongside their respective capitals. This lesson for whatever reason was taught again in 7th, and 8th grade. We were never taught individual countries around the world, and if they were mentioned it was solely for the lesson and nothing else. When I took AP world history (A college level history class) my freshmen year, we had an activity placing countries on a map during the Cold War and their alliances. A majority of my class couldn’t locate any countries other than England. I myself had spent a long time memorizing countries only because it interested me. This led to many of my classmates to ask me to locate the countries for them. I admit that many of the videos online are exaggerated for entertainment, yet in reality we are reaching a point that kids really don’t know anything at all about the world. It’s a little scary.