Indelible

The Dying Subject, The Dying Art

[originally posted in "The dying subject, the dying art" ]

Support geography education for American schools.

I think many of us with halfway decent schooling have thought this over the years. I mean, the fact that some people between the ages of 18 and 24 can't find Louisiana on a map is downright shameful. Come on! It's fucking Louisiana, a state pasted all over the news due to hurricane Katrina among many other things. The state has even made commercials with celebrities and laypeople alike encouraging us to visit so they can revamp their hammered economy. And let's not even get into how many people cannot find foreign countries on a map! In that vein, we really ought to resurrect the map as a necessity in US classrooms.

I remember my world history class back in tenth grade. We worked with maps on a regular basis and had map quizzes. Several of us felt this was not that difficult. I can understand having a hard time differentiating between the various Balkan countries, considering its status as the powderkeg of Europe. The political boundaries tend to shift, and keeping track of them can be something of a tricky task. However, there were kids that could not identify the Netherlands, Ireland, any of the Scandinavian nations (Norway, Sweden and Finland; would Denmark be considered Scandinavian?), nations along the Black Sea (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and nations between Germany and the Balkan states (Come on, Switzerland is not that hard to find on a map). Considering this class was full of kids planning to enter IB (International Baccalaureate) program, I found this more than a little pathetic. After grading map quizzes completed by the honors kids, I felt so miserable at marking incorrect identifications of Spain wrong I really wanted to shoot my face off. I could not believe this shit. I think the highest grade any of the honors kids received was a C. Damn. We also had map quizzes on the Middle East, Africa and South America. South America is a relatively easy continent to study since there are fewer countries to track. Many of these countries also contain enough acres to make large shapes people can recognize, especially people who utilize photographic memory. Still, the results of these quizzes stunned me. How could supposedly smart kids not know this information?

I remember obsessively reading a kids atlas when I was in kindergarten and first grade. Maybe that has skewed my perception of this subject. To me, knowing a country's physical attributes, location and basic cultural practices became a priority early on in life. Taking a trip outside US borders as a child may have also played a huge role in my understanding of what various types of lands and cultures comprise the Earth. Why so few people understand the importance of this type of knowledge boggles my mind. Personally, I feel we need this knowledge more than ever so we can have educated opinions on world issues. If we knew more about Iraq than its oil reserves, there's a chance we would not be fighting there today. What people in US society knew about Iraq dated back over a decade, and none of the information was cultural. Had we known the cultural makeup of Iraq's denizens, would we have gone to war there either decade? I can't answer that, but my guess is we would have fought harder to halt initiatives to invade said country. Obviously, we cannot undo the shit that has gone down. What we can do, however, is shift our thinking in regards to global matters. We suffer not only from governmental misinformation but also from a lack of basic geographical information pertinent to global issues of the day. This means that politicians ought to rethink how they state their positions on various matters to their constituencies. Politicians seem hesitant to acknowledge their responsibilities of being mini-teachers. Their constituents deserve to know vital information regarding their stance on a global issue. If understanding that position requires knowledge of a nation's national resources and basic social practices, politicians need to convey that information, and most of them don't do so either because of their neglect towards this unspoken responsibility or they don't have the knowledge themselves. Well, let me put it this way. If my generation can't even find Louisiana on a map, then future national politics will lead to a totally fucked nation, especially in the realm of foreign policy because we can't figure out where North Korea is located (and I know where it is). Anyone besides me just a tad disturbed? Well, who knows what the future will bring? One thing, though, is certain. Our global awareness is currently damn low, but that is a factor we can control. In that vein, I urge you, if nothing else, to do this one little thing.

Support geography education for American schools.