US civic knowledge is lacking among citizens of the Republic of Turkey

last night, after showing my host family pictures of my road trip from California to New York, I got into a conversation about the number of stars on the US flag with my host family. As I told them, ever child in America learns that there are 50 stars on the flag for 50 states. My host father however insisted there were 48. I said this was impossible and then my host father went into the computer room to have my host sister (at the computer) count the number of stars. She came up with 47. Fearing that perhaps I and everyone else in the US had been lied to our entire lives, I preceded to pull up a list of the US states and a picture of the US flag on my computer and count them with my host brother. Don't worry, there are in fact 50 states and 50 stars.