History lesson #460

"You want to know where Brazil is? Buy a map."

This might seem like a humorous remark for someone who perchance has gotten lost & needs someone or something to help them along. But it's not, given the fact that we live in a culture where our knowledge of the world outside the United States is unsurprisingly limited (with the exception of the adventurous & globally curious bunch). It's not that we are merely unaware of the need to point out place names of a country we don't know squat about. It's the fact that staring at world maps, trying to locate countries besides our own, funny-sounding names associated with these countries has never been a big deal with Americans in the first place. Sad but it's true. Very true.

Obscure names, like an epiphany, work their way into our lingo. If "Congo," "Java," "Borneo," or the simple phrase "from here to Timbuktu" don't ring any bells by now, they should. Then again, how many people have actually made the effort to go find a map in hopes of finding out exactly where these places are located? When the nations of Somalia & Rwanda emerged as part of key news headlines almost 15 years ago, even then, we were hit with tunnel vision: "Where in good heavens is Mogadishu? Rwanda?" The only nation we really knew, inside & out, was the United States; the very thoughts of Bosnia, Somalia, & yes, even Rwanda never really entered our radar until later. Still the thought of looking them up on a map seemed too much to ask, too much to educate us on.

But in terms of getting an adequate education, the word "map" once again comes up like a lightbulb, a revelation out of the blue. Or so we think. Maps & globes have been in our educational infrastructure for the longest time but how well we used (& use) them can only be shown in the following statements:

In the good ol' days of elementary school, we were expected to learn everything about every state, especially being capable enough to look it up on a map; after that, we had to learn state capitals among other things connected to U.S. History & geography. Other than that, we didn't learn much about Asia, Africa, or Europe - perhaps a cursory page's worth of information - not to take offense here at all. But when it came to learning about other continents, we stopped way short of the mark - the whole premise of elementary instruction was all about Indiana and the rest of the United States.

Then we moved on to junior high/middle school & the word "map" got diluted in meaning & purpose, as every class with hemispheric & United States geography has clearly shown. Once we got past our freshman year of high school, the very topic of world history & with it, the very need for maps seemed almost irrelevant.

Bottom line is this: when it comes to informing our students about where all the different nations of the world are located (as well as which continent they're on), we've fallen asleep on the job...enough cause for alarm, right? For the typical adult who is given blank maps of Asia, Africa & Europe, how can he know where in the world every country is located if he has no point of reference to work with, i.e. a map which is 110% up to date? He can't be expected to know everything about everything, that is, unless there's a map, someone to provide him knowledge of the nations he's trying to find, which countries border which, etc., etc. (Even in the local/metro sections of our favorite newspapers, we need maps to help point out this & that.)

As Frank Gray, a columnist for the Journal-Gazette points out, "...That's why companies make maps and put the names of countries on them, because not everyone is expected to know where every country in the world is located. Certainly, when one in five Americans, presumably young adults and older, can't find the U.S. on a map, the normal reaction is 'ye gads.'" And he's right too. The need for maps to better inform the masses which are in need of knowledge about the world in general has never been great but ought to be, given that 1 in 5 Americans can't find the United States on a world map. Educating people to find the nation in which they live shouldn't be that difficult of a task to tackle, should it?

When it comes to every nation outside the United States, we've got our work cut out for us for sure. This much is true, very true indeed.