I Suck at Geography, and Can’t Read, Either
Posted by
KTK
I have already noted how ignorant I am of geography. But this morning, on a whim, I started staring at a map of Europe, really paying attention to it for the first time in a long time, and I am aghast at how completely screwed up I am.
I had this vague mental map of Europe that I’ve been carrying around in my head, probably since high school (where, not coincidentally, they didn’t teach geography). It’s not like I haven’t seen real maps many times since then, but I never paid attention. And the few times I have tried to impress on myself the geography of a region - the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe - because it was relevant to some issue there, I have gotten only a distorted and out-of-context view of things. I have even lectured students on political geography (in a by-the-way, parenthetical manner - I would never set myself up as an expert on the subject) - sometimes with embarrassing results. And now when I actually look at the map, I am amazed at how wrong I was, and so uncomprehendingly, for so long.
Some observations:
- I thought Holland was more or less where Denmark is.
- I thought Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland were more or less “up there” without distinction.
- Norway, Sweden, and Finland are big!
- I thought Belgium was more or less where northern Germany is - it’s actually directly across the English Channel.
- I knew Switzerland bordered Italy, but still thought it was more or less where Luxembourg is - it’s actually not far from the Mediterranean.
- I also thought Austria was north of the Czech Republic.
- I am always amazed at how big Sicily is, and yet never remember that the next time. Same with Sardinia and Corsica.
- What the hell is Palma? Did it used to be there?
- The former Yugoslav countries are north of Greece? How long has that been going on? (I literally thought Greece bordered Italy at the northern tip of the Adriatic. In fact, there’s about 600 miles of Slavs between them. Ouch.)
- I always completely garble the eastern Mediterranean - there’s a lot of water east of Italy, and I can never remember that.
- I thought Turkey extended a lot further south into the area of Syria.
- I always think of the Arabian peninsula as a lot further west than it is - almost all of the southern Mediterranean is actually Africa. I thought Palestine was more or less due south of Italy, and Egypt much further to the west. As Bogart says about Casablanca: “I was . . . misinformed.”
- That explains why I’m always surprised that “eastern Europe” is so far west.
- France is a lot bigger than I can ever remember. Germany is also big, but I kind of knew that; I’m always surprised at how far south it extends, however.
- Russia is really goddam big!
That’s pretty embarrassing. I don’t have much to say about it, other than I am teh dumbshit. But just to keep up appearances, I will offer a few comments with broader implications.
One is this: it seems very arrogant to say it out loud, and I wouldn’t normally, but I honestly think it’s no more than truth to say, whatever my many shortcomings, I know more about most things than most people. By “most people”, I don’t mean “most readers of this blog” or “most readers of blogs in general” or even “most readers of newspapers or other serious sources of information”. I mean “most Americans overall, a depressingly large number of whom are undeniably grossly ignorant, many to a pathological degree, as evidenced by the fact that more than half of them voted for George Bush at least once”. Compared to them, I know a lot, and probably even in the area of geography (a gross weak point on my part). But my level of knowledge, of geography in particular, and other things as well, is shamefully low - and most people in this country are evaluating the news, reading about the Middle East and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly Iran, listening to their blowhard shepherds rant about “surrender monkeys” or falling dominoes, and voting, while knowing even less than me. That’s scary enough as a general proposition, but when I pair it with the stark evidence of how little I actually know, it’s terrifying and depressing.
Another point: we really ought to teach this stuff. I say that as an ex-typical-teenager who would have died at the thought of memorizing boring names, dates, and places in high school, and whose lack of skill in many mental areas still today stems from his refusal to memorize things that can’t be learned in any other way: math formulas, foreign languages, chemical equations, and so on. That being said, it matters a great deal how we teach it, and we simply aren’t doing a very good job, even when we try. But whether we teach world knowledge at all is a question of priorities, and we ought to bump some of the old-fashioned boring stuff a bit further up the list.
For some bizarre reason, obscure principles of pedagogy somehow became political and even religious issues in the US; “phonics” instruction in reading is literally an article of faith for many conservative Protestants, especially homeschoolers, for reasons that I can’t fathom at all. I think the “critical thinking” movement in teaching, which is deeply threatening to conservatives, got conflated with the move to less rigid styles of pedagogy that arose at the same time (and, in their minds, with Satan worship, acid tripping, and “the 60s”). Now, to suggest that kids should learn words, dates, or place-names in context rather than by drilling from memorization lists is somehow equivalent to suggesting that they should tune in, turn on, and drop out. In typical fashion, conservatives turn a question of basic empirical fact - what teaching methods produce more knowledge in more students? - into a question of moral and religious values, while simultaneously getting the factual point wrong.
It’s interesting that Obama’s call for greater global awareness is actually a return to what used to be the conservative position on education. Knowing foreign languages was once a hallmark of an educated person (the more so, in fact, the less that person was actually expected to use their education to earn a living). Geography - an extraordinarily boring and unengaging subject at the basic level - was a staple of public education in the “3 Rs” period. And history of the names-’n-dates/great-dead-white-man school was the only history there was until not long ago. The decay of foreign-language instruction in the US accompanied the broadening of the curriculum into cultural studies and social history, with anguished cries from conservatives at the intrusion of women and non-whites into the previously pristine mental landscape. Re-injecting some names, numbers, and language competency into the curriculum, even with modern teaching methods, would actually be giving them what they used to say they wanted. But of course teaching Spanish, a language spoken by over 20% of our own population and virtually the entire population of our largest neighbor and fourth-largest trading partner, most of whom happen to have brown skin, is a scandal.
When I was a kid, I had an Atari 400 computer. We had a “European Countries and Capitals” game — which you could load into the computer’s 16K of memory from an ordinary cassette tape in a mere 15 minutes, but I digress — that my older brother and I used to play competitively. As a result, I used to be very good at European geography, as that existed in around 1982 or so. It used to draw a cheesy rendition of the European map and then highlight the country, with a blinking dot for the capital city. You had to name both, and you had to type them more or less correctly (I think if you got the first five or six letters right, it assumed you knew and gave you the point, even if you made a typo later). It’s why I still know the capital of Iceland, that Brussels is the capital of Belgium, Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands (though I often think it’s The Hague), and that Bucharest is the capital of Romania, not that it will ever really come in handy to know any of that. It’s also why I know that Bonn was the capital of West Germany, when there was a West Germany; and that Belgrade was the capital of Yugoslavia, when there was a Yugoslavia; and that Prague was the capital of Czechoslovakia, when there was a Czechoslovakia.
(It amazes me just how much I’ve forgotten, as well as just how much has changed.)
That said, it seems that making a game of it can actually be a very effective way of teaching these things.
Comment 7/15/2008
Another note: my biggest regret from my high school days is that I didn’t take my foreign language instruction seriously. I took four and a half years of German, and barely speak a word of it. I speak far more Spanish, and with far less formal instruction.
Comment 7/15/2008
If it’s any consolation, I’ll readily admit that I presume I’m equally bad. I have a prayer when it comes to land masses, but bodies of water - I’m beyond helpless.
Comment 7/15/2008
The Scandinavian countries are big, but not as big as shown on that map. It looks like it’s a Mercator projection, which greatly exaggerates size when you get far away from the Equator. For example, Greenland is nowhere near as big as that map indicates.
Comment 7/15/2008
I was going to say what Dvorkin already said. Map projections are tricky things, and most maps use the utterly horrible Mercator. If you really want to see what countries are big and which are small, get yourself a globe, not a map.
Comment 7/15/2008
what Dvorkin and Tomblin said. even correcting for map projection, however, Russia is still Really Fucking Big.
Comment 7/15/2008
Going to a place is a good way to learn geography. On a recent trip to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, I learned a lot about Eastern Europe. The progress that the countries have made since the fall of communism is remarkable, especially in the Czech Republic.
Comment 7/15/2008
It’s nice to know that if you offer an unsolicited confession about a subject in which you are (comparatively) intellectually weak, people will respond to you as if you are a total moron.
Mercator projection huh, ya don’t say.
Yo, KTK, be careful when driving too, I heard objects in mirrors are closer than they appear…
Comment 7/15/2008
I have to admit that I very nearly posted something about the Mercator projection, and would have, if not for the fact that I simply forgot to mention it.
Comment 7/15/2008
I’ve always known the map of Europe pretty well, and Asia as well. Interestingly the map I don’t know quite so well is…that of the USA! Go figure. I look at a weather map, with boundaries but no state or capital names and towards the middle of the country, I get stumped. Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana start to look the same to me…
You are correct about dropping language requirements as having a negative impact on US education. Funny, it seems to reflect our insularity. I can’t think of another country in the world that doesn’t require students to learn a language other than their own. It would seem to be a necessity in a world that continues to get smaller…
Comment 7/15/2008
Dang. I was going to mention the projection distortion as well. And suggest that everyone should have a globe. A nice big one, maybe 18″ diameter. It’s the best way to really understand what’s where. I got mine when my sister moved to Australia… One thing that really strikes me looking at the globe is how far north the UK is.
Fred, give McCain a call and describe your trip to him. Maybe then he will stop talking about Checkoslovakia.
Comment 7/15/2008
Small correction on globes, make that 16″ (the common diameter in that general size range). Here’s a link to something very close to what I purchased. Obviously the stand will be a personal preference, but I think taller is better - makes it easier to actually spend a bit of time looking at the thing without getting a stiff back (he said, revealing his advanced age). Ans I’d recommend the antique oceans, not the blue oceans. Just looks better.
http://www.1worldglobes.com/1WorldGlobes/gclehigh16.htm
Put it on your list for next birthday or Christmas. You’ll be glad you did.
Comment 7/15/2008
quote: “give McCain a call and describe your trip to him. Maybe then he will stop talking about Checkoslovakia[sic].”
Give Obama a call and tell him there are 50 states, not 57.
Comment 7/15/2008
If he does it more than once, I’ll begin to wonder.
Comment 7/15/2008
Blah blah Mercator.Equal area!Comment 7/16/2008
As Thers always says, sometimes, “Si vous refusez de lire, vous êtes des cons.”
Comment 7/16/2008
Thanks this was a laugh in my home with my hungarian wife. She’s always frightened when she meets an American to find out how ignorant they are - perhaps that’s why she enjoys educating me!
I am always amazed how much Europeans know about America. I pride myself in being able to say I have travelled through a majority of US states - but I met many Europeans who claim to have travelled far more in the US of A than I - and most europeans simply cannot believe that I have never been to California.
Recently, I went to a Budapest meeting of Hungary for Obama only to discover a majority of the group are Hungarians and that they know the US Campaign issues better than some Americans I know!
Here’s a mp3 recording I did of what Hungarians think of Obama….
http://lmv.hu/node/2787
Comment 7/16/2008
people will respond to you as if you are a total moron
It’s nice to know that if you offer some advice to somebody to help them no longer make the sort of mistakes they just confessed to having made, they’ll act like a total asshat about it.
Comment 7/16/2008
Actually, I didn’t say anything about the projection issue. I was trying to look cool about it, like I already knew all that.
The truth is I did totally forget the map projection problem, while at the same time mentally discounting the size of Greenland, because that’s the classic example of Mercator distortion and I know it’s not really that big. So there’s an example of something I did know messing up what I thought I knew, in addition to all the things I didn’t know.
But any way you slice it, the Nordic countries are way bigger than you’d think, given their otherwise invisible position on the world scene. Also, if you tilt your head to the left, they look like a double-headed penis with three balls. Which is kind of cool.
Comment 7/16/2008
It was a joke, Paul. Relax.
Plus, KTK didn’t act like an asshat. I allegedly did.
But, I wasn’t the one who made the mistakes either. I’m aware of the Mercator Projection issue, I just said that I kinda suck a geography - a problem, btw, that would not be very much resolved by learning about the Mercator projection anyway.
Comment 7/17/2008
I nominate Paul’s last comment for the “being offended with the least justification” award. As the commercial says - I didn’t see that coming.
Comment 7/17/2008
I’ll give that a second.
Comment 7/17/2008