Visual Thinking

Sometime after the first Gulf War, I heard on the news that sixty-three per cent of young Americans could not identify Iraq on a map of the world. I could tell by the way that the presenter spoke that this was something bad: more evidence that Americans were silly. I spent a moment thinking where Iraq was. My mind was blank. This worried me. I didn’t want to be sneered at by newsreaders so I tested myself by drawing a map of the world.