G is for Geography

I was reading the New York Times weather forecast page in my hotel room in Los Angeles on Saturday and looked at the list of Asia / Pacific cities and realized I had absolutely no idea where the first city on the list, Almaty, was located.  I did much better with the rest of the list, with only Dhaka being unfamiliar.  I'm an educated and fairly well-traveled person, but when I look at a globe I see vast swaths of the planet that I know very little about.  There's always more to learn in a lifetime.

There's an excellent Ambrose Beirce quote that goes something like "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."  I think it's unfortunate that the education system isn't the way of teaching Americans geography, but if I was given a blank map of Africa and told to fill in the countries, I don't think I'd get a passing grade -- and I've even been to Africa. 

I'm going to spend more time spinning the globe and putting my finger down in random places and see if I can educate myself about geography in February.

Comments

[lura]

It's interesting that you should mention geography in education. Personally, after 7 elementary schools and, luckily, one school system for junior high and high school, I made it through 12 years without a single geography class. I tell the kids not to ask me a single question about their geography homework.

So I was seriosuly impressed when Darby got into 7th grade, and one of the first things she had to do with the class was put together an entire map of Africa on the wall. They were later tested over it.

In either 7th or 8th grade, the kids' assignments was to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I think my favorite solution that they came up with was to put Prozac in the water there.

Later, while we were listening to news in the car, both of my kids (grades 6 and 10) were able to name the capital of Costa Rica, and then they started quizzing each other on other world capitals.

I wondered, is it just Boulder Valley Schools? Or are other schools hitting geography as hard these days?