Geography

It is rather ironic that my husband collects maps,  as I am not a geography maven. I blame Sister Fulgentia, my third grade teacher. That was the year that geography entered the curriculum at my elementary school, and Sister Fulgentia scared the living latitude AND longitude out of me. I remembered her as an immense, red-faced woman who screamed a lot at little people who cowered before her.  Particularly little people who didn't know the right answers or violated any of her many rules.  I devoted my third-grade life to being as small and unobtrusive as possible, and I memorized faithfully the answers to questions in my little geography notebook--understanding nothing, but terrified into feats of memory I'd never performed before or since. (The good sister also bears responsibility for my less-than-stellar long-division skills as well, but that is a story for another day.)

In any event, geography has escaped me, for the most part. I can't follow a map unless it is oriented in the direction I'm traveling. I can barely find "North" on a compass, and the GPS lady in my car system makes me nervous, particularly when she says in that annoyed voice: "Re-calculating route. As soon as possible, make a U-turn."

But, even I, geography cripple that I am, was horrified at a recent occurrence. I walked into my bank to ask for assistance. (The only time I enter the bank anymore is if I have a problem: this time, I was out of checks.) The two tellers seated behind the desk were talking, so I excused myself for interrupting. The young man said it was no problem, that his colleague was just asking a question. Recognizing me, she asked ME the question: "Is there a state named 'Rhode Island'?" I assured them that indeed, there was, and that I had personally visited it several times. I gave them the approximate location--though I was somewhat concerned that they might not understand exactly where New England was, or even 'just south of Massachusetts'.

Now, allowing for the fact that these young people might not have received their education here in the U.S., maybe this knowledge gap is not so surprising. Yet, one would think that, in a business that spans the entire country--and even, the globe--they might have somewhere run across a list of states, if only in scrolling through addresses.

It is appalling to me that in our stampede toward science literacy and math competence, we might just be leaving in the dust our concept of the world that we live in. A world where it might be useful to know the names of these (united) states. In my childhood, I remember having to identify states by their shapes on a large blank map that supplied only outlines. The midwest gave me a little difficulty, as I recall, but I could usually figure it out, if only by process of elimination. (If the big mitten is Michigan, then THAT shape must be Illinois..) My grandmother used to quiz us on state capitals--and, at one time, I knew them all. How in the world can you understand history books, or appreciate the pioneers, or imagine the issues being debated in Congress, or (horrors!) contemplate presidential primaries without even a basic mental picture of the states and their locations and sizes?

Even scarier is the thought that these gaps are just the tip of the iceberg. How much cultural/geographical/historical (I can go on...) information is missing from the public consciousness? Are we becoming a nation of ignoramuses? Ignoramusi? As a teacher, I occasionally ran up against missing links in what I thought every student should know, or should have been taught by a parent or elementary school teacher. Surely, everybody had at one time asked where rain came from..and been treated to the demonstration of a tin piepan full of ice cubes being held over a pot of boiling water. No? Well, maybe I was just a weird Mr. Wizard mom who liked explaining stuff. But still...Maybe I was too quick to dismiss those little omissions in kids' everyday education. Maybe I wasn't as weird as I thought.

Maybe we all need to know the little stuff in order to understand the big stuff. Maybe that's our problem right now.