Is it shocking how few people know about the boroughs of NYC? (New York: credit, college)

[iGlenn]

Originally Posted by FTLkid754

The majority of people I incountered don't know what a borough is. And if they know what a borough is they think Long Island is part of NYC and that Harlem is its own borough or its own city and that Brookyln is also seperate city I hear little about Queens and nothing about Staten Island which leads me to believe a lot of people outside the New York part of the NYC metro don't know they existand know next to nothing about the way NYC is set up. Most of these misconseptions about NYC are from people I lived with in suburban NJ inside the NYC metro area so imagine what people in Kansas think. Does this suprise you or do you think its not a big deal at all?

It doesn't surprise me. How many people do you know that can recall all 50 states from memory, label them on a map, and know their capitols? How many people can find Iraq or Iran on an unlabeled map? All these things are equally important but many couldn't complete these tasks.

[cotb16]

I've actually talked to some people from Brooklyn and they actually did not know that the Bronx was part of the Five Boroughs.

[Dark of the Moon]

I recently had a couple high school students who, when they looked at a map, kept identifying Long Island as Manhattan. When the other teacher and I tried to correct them, the girls said that, no, what we were showing them was much too small and therefore couldn't be Manhattan. And these were students who lived in Manhattan !!!

[rlrl]

tell them the Bronx is the 50th state of the US and is unusual because it is the only state that is only 8.3 miles from north to south!!!

I can label some states on a map but not all of them. I can cite some state capitols but not all of them. I cannot find Iraq/iran on a map. But I can easily label all nabes in Manhattan, bronx, as well as some nabes in Queens, brooklyn

[rlrl]

I recently had a couple high school students who, when they looked at a map, kept identifying Long Island as Manhattan. When the other teacher and I tried to correct them, the girls said that, no, what we were showing them was much too small and therefore couldn't be Manhattan. And these were students who lived in Manhattan !!!


if manhattan was described as a "long island" then maybe they would have identified it correctly!!??

so they think manhattan is 120 miles from east to west rather than only 2 miles!?

[rlrl]

I had a group of people pull up to me in a car on Broadway in Riverdale in the Bronx. they told me they were from upstate Columbia County. Since they saw a sign on the parkway for the Broadway exit they took the exit. They asked me where the Majestic theater was (on W 44th street off Broadway in Manhattan) and i told them that was in Manhattan, and that they were in the Bronx. I told them they had about 200 blocks to go.

[Dark of the Moon]

Originally Posted by rlrl

so they think manhattan is 120 miles from east to west rather than only 2 miles!?

Yup!

[Viralmd]

This doesn't surprise me. As cited in a prior post, how much does anyone know about other cities. I don't know that it's general knowledge that Brixton is in South London, while Earls Court is in West London and Camden Town is in North London. I don't think many who've never been there know that the arrondissements of Paris are organized in a clockwise spiral centered on the geographical center of the city, either.

No, not surprising at all.

[nyctc7]

I'm not surprised. I suppose we're not the only city or state that has designations left over from the "old days." For example, in Louisiana they call a "County" a "Parish," a holdover from its French and Spanish Roman Catholic days. Trying to explain even to a native Ny'er the difference between a borough and a county is sometimes not all that easy. Why do we have a borough president, borough community colleges, but a county clerk, and a county district attorney?

And I have met native NY'ers who were in disbelief that Queens and Brooklyn are on Long Island!

[Alex Libman]

The "five boroughs" is an artificial concept imposed by bad government bureaucracy. If NYC's economy had grown more organically, it would have been a better city with better transportation infrastructure and better integration with its surroundings, like North NJ (related thread).