The public "failed" a geography quiz given by the National Taiwan Normal University, the school's Department of Geography professors said yesterday.
The result of the seven-question multiple choice survey showed that the 1,090 men and women between the ages of 18 and 50 only got an average of 52.6 percent of the questions correct, below the 60 percent threshold department professors consider a passing grade.
"I was very surprised, shocked even, by some of the results," Shen Su-min (沈淑敏), an associate professor at the department of geography, told a press conference yesterday.
"Twenty-one-point-one percent thought that rich coral habitats could be found at the Taroko National Park," Shen said.
The public fared even worse when asked: "In which country is the city of Dubai located?"
Only 40.5 percent chose the United Arab Emirates, the right answer.
Shen observed that the public tends to do better when it comes to topics that are in the news or might directly affect their daily lives. A total of 68.2 percent correctly identified a drought in Australia as the reason why powdered milk prices recently spiked in Taiwan.
The challenges of globalization means that Taiwanese cannot afford to be ignorant about the wider world, Shen said.
"The starting point to understanding the world is knowing where things are," Shen said.
"We do not have the luxury of being inward-looking because we are a small country that is seeking survival in the interstices of the world," she said. "We must be aware of what's going on globally."
While the majority of Taiwanese might have flunked the geography quiz, 15 year-old Peng Tzu-huan, an incoming freshman at Song Shan Senior High, found it a piece of cake. Peng was a part of the team that represented Taiwan at this year's National Geographic World Championship in San Diego.
The team placed sixth out of the 18 competing countries.
Peng said that he was worried that geography and history would become increasingly marginalized as a subject at the high school level with the introduction of other topics such as citizenship and society as part of educational reform.
"Citizenship and society are important, but I hope that geography does not get squeezed out as a result," said Peng at the press conference.
Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday welcomed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s remarks that the organization’s cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners must be deepened to deter potential threats from China and Russia. Rutte on Wednesday in Berlin met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Germany’s accession to NATO. He told a post-meeting news conference that China is rapidly building up its armed forces, and the number of vessels in its navy outnumbers those of the US Navy. “They will have another 100 ships sailing by 2030. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads,” Rutte said, adding that such
The cosponsors of a new US sanctions package targeting Russia on Thursday briefed European allies and Ukraine on the legislation and said the legislation would also have a deterrent effect on China and curb its ambitions regarding Taiwan. The bill backed by US senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal calls for a 500 percent tariff on goods imported from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports — targeting nations such as China and India, which account for about 70 percent of Russia’s energy trade, the bankroll of much of its war effort. Graham and Blumenthal told The Associated Press
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
RSS