America and Americans

[Billionbridges.com]

> But it is not so in all languages and cultures. I recall
> hearing of the child of Americans living in Germany,
> fluent in German and attending a German school,
> whose paper was marked wrong for counting the
> continents as seven. There are five, said the teacher:
> Europe, Asia, Africa, American, and Australia.

This brings to mind a test I once gave to an ESL class
at a girl's high school in Taiwan. One of the questions
was: "What is the largest city in North America?".  On
the answer sheet there were four choices; the correct
answer was, of course, Mexico City. But nearly every
one of them checked off New York, in spite of the fact
that the materials we'd been using had presented a
list of the world's largest metro areas.

The reason? They are taught that Mexico is not part
of North America, but rather, South America. The
dividing line is a culturaI one for them, and I could not
argue with that reasoning in light of how Europe and
Asia are divided.

Don