National geographic illiteracy

I recently overheard some 18-year-old college students discussing the location of New Zealand.

More accurately, they were expressing curiosity as to its location.

Once it was identified as a remote island country east of Australia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the teens were then fascinated that New Zealanders are currently enjoying springtime.

"So, like, their winter is in June?"

"And in December it's summertime?"

"Do they still sing 'White Christmas' even when it's hot?"

There was little point in asking them how, during their baker's dozen of years of formal classroom education, they had eluded learning about the opposite seasonal effect between the northern and southern hemispheres.

I asked anyway.

Their answer surprised me, and may surprise you: They never took a geography class.

It was my turn to express curiosity, so I looked up the Arkansas Department of Education framework for social studies.

Sure enough, the only geography course listed--World Geography--is an "elective" one-semester high school class.

Geography is worked into the required U.S. History course, but not in a basic way. One of the standards, for example, proscribes that students shall analyze and discuss the "political, social, economic, geographic" causes and effects of war in the early history of the United States.

But without a fundamental understanding of American geography, how can students fully understand geographic factors in the American Revolution or the Civil War? That's a little like asking kids who haven't mastered the alphabet and spelling to expound on syntax and complex linguistics.

Looking through the accreditation standards, geography is listed under social studies class curricula for grades K-8, but isn't mentioned at all in the required high school courses.

Presumably it falls under the parenthetical phrase "other options as approved by the Department of Education" following the four required units for social studies.

Accredited high schools must offer journalism, but not geography.

Before you start thinking that makes Arkansas backward, consider that there's no G in the national STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) focus. Most high schools, even in the highest-performing education states, no longer teach geography as a stand-alone class.

National Assessment of Education Progress tests prove as much. Not only was there an inexplicable nine-year gap in administration of the geography text, from 2001 to 2010, but 12th-grade student scores even declined slightly.

Many who went to school prior to the 1990s can remember geography as a class, which required among other things memorization of states and capitals, and mastery of reading and using maps.

I'll never forget worrying what horrors might befall me if I missed a state capital in my geography class, which was taught by a hard-nosed coach.

High schools may be getting their cues on abandoning geography from the collegiate level, where a great many universities--including all but one of the Ivy-League institutions--have discontinued their geography departments.

That may help connect some quizzical dots regarding high-profile geographical gaffes committed by high-ranking and highly educated people in authority.

Just last week, before President Barack Obama's Islamic State speech, a senior white house official mentioned Saudi Arabia's "extensive border" with Syria.

Five countries share a border with Syria, but Saudi Arabia isn't one of them.

Back in 2011, while providing breaking news coverage of the Libyan rebels' capture of the capital of Tripoli, CNN mistakenly broadcast a map of Tripoli, Lebanon.

Another notable geo-goof came in 2009, when Fox News misplaced the Mideast country where American troops were committed by showing an image labeling Iraq as Egypt.

In this day of Google maps and GPS, there's really no excuse for not fact-checking geographical content if it's part of your job.

But even for average Americans, there's never been a greater need to understand and truly comprehend geography than today.

And yet the subject has never been more watered down in our education system. As one teacher observed, if a textbook says history, you teach history. "Embedded" geographical content naturally takes a back seat.

This time of year I normally renew my call for a Constitution class at every grade in Arkansas public schools (Constitution Day was Wednesday).

Exposing 450,000 Arkansas children to intensive, age-appropriate constitutional study for 180 days of school would result in 81 million direct interactions with the world's most-renowned government charter each year. All Arkansas students would be better informed on citizenship. Some, maybe many, would apply that knowledge to become better citizens as well.

This year, I'm amending my proposal to split a Constitution class with a geography class so that every year students would get a semester of each. The subjects overlap anyway, of course, as they both also do with history courses. But in an increasingly global world, with an increasingly mobile domestic population, we need dedicated geography education.

Surveys show that European students know far more about American geography than our own students do. All the benefits of millions of yearly interactions with the Constitution would translate for geography as well.

Arkansas could lead the nation in a desperately needed surge for geographical literacy. Even if no other state follows suit, our own students would still benefit. That should be reason enough.

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Dana Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.

Editorial on 09/19/2014

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