50 Times People Failed At Geography With Such Confidence, They Got Shamed For It Online

In Patrick's opinion, geography has a negative reputation among some students. What's more, geographic education isn't prioritized in many schools.

"I think that a lot of geography ignorance comes from the lack of geographic instruction in schools. Schools have an increasingly long list of subjects that must be taught and geography is losing its share," he told Bored Panda.

"Geography has this reputation of rote memorization of things like countries and capital cities. This is not exciting to most students," Patrick pointed out that many students don't get hooked on geography because of the associations the subject has. That's why it's vital to change people's perspectives on it.

"The way to encourage geographic learning is to make it exciting," Patrick shared with us.

"This may be by including geography lessons in learning about different cultures around the world. Geography is a component of current events and there needs to be an emphasis on how these events are occurring in a geographic context. Geography should not be taught in isolation, it should be tied to some context such as history, the physical Earth, culture, or travel," he explained that the entire approach to the subject should be altered.

Look, nobody saying that everyone’s born knowing every tiny part of the globe. Education, learning, collecting knowledge—they’re all processes. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone learns at their own pace. We get that.

Some of us have made really embarrassing geography slip-ups, too: for some reason, yours truly got it into their head since they were a kid that New Zealand was northeast of Australia, instead of southeast, where it actually is. However, natural curiosity, a willingness to be humble, and fixing our mistakes means that, eventually, we get to correct our geography fails. Or, well, some of us do.

Some of the most embarrassing geography fails and facepalms happen when news presenters end up having to stand in front of error-filled maps. Or when high-profile figures get their info mixed up. Maybe someone made an honest mistake. Or maybe someone is actually incredibly ignorant. Whatever the case might be, these are the moments that end up being photographed, screenshotted, and shared for years and years on the internet.

It’s very hard to recover from a public fail like this. On the other hand, acknowledging the fact that we made an embarrassing mistake opens us up to a lot of growth potential. And it can actually win us the respect of our peers.

Recently, Bored Panda spoke about accepting our flaws and those of others with psychologist Lee Chambers, from the UK. 

“As humans, we are a wonderfully unique mix that is personal to each one of us. It can always be difficult to find peace with our flaws Whether they [the flaws] be physical, mental, intellectual, or social, many of us will at some point in our childhood been bullied or singled out for our differences,” he told us.

“It can be easy to ignore them [the flaws], and pretend they don't exist, but the real power comes in accepting them, embracing them, and realizing that some flaws we can change, and others might not be flexible,” the mental health expert said.

According to Lee, we can lead a high quality and rewarding life when we adopt a growth-oriented mindset. He said that the point is to develop in other ways and have amazing strengths despite our flaws. In short, messing up with geography or anything else isn’t the end of the world if you don’t let it be. But owning up to your fail and learning from it all can be very powerful.

“The beauty is that sharing our flaws helps us to become more human and connect with others, as we all have weaknesses, and being vulnerable and open will have others seeing you as authentic, honest, and courageous,” the psychologist said.

“The process of taking ownership of your flaws is powerful as it also makes us more accepting of the flaws of others and less worried about fitting in. For as long as we don't embrace our flaws, we will be running from them and be more judgemental of others, less tolerant of differences, and more controlling.”