Where in the World is...?

It almost doesn't matter how the college catalog describes the courses I teach; inevitably I'm going to find myself teaching all kinds of things that are seemingly not related to the subject of the course. I work on the assumption that college seniors have a certain amount of common knowledge; you know what they say about assumptions and assuming.There are gaps in my students' knowledge that I am constantly tripping over. Instead of just shaking my head I try and fill in at least some of these gaps.

One area where students are lacking is in their knowledge of geography. My brother is the chair of the geography department at one of the California State University colleges, and he routinely tears his hair out at what the students don't know. And what they don't know can hurt them.

A student came to me for help in editing a major research project he was doing for one of the business departments. The paper was in excess of thirty pages and was an analysis of business trends in the US, particularly focusing on the Sunbelt states. And there is where the problem began. This student defined "Sunbelt" as those states where there is likely to be sunshine throughout most of the year (part of the definition but not all of it). Thus, he included in the Sunbelt Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. He also included Texas and New Mexico. He left out California, Nevada and Oklahoma and Tennessee etc.. Before we could even begin to edit his paper, I brought in blank maps of the US. Some were divided by region, some by state borders. I discovered that he 1)couldn't fill in the names of all 50 states and 2) had no real idea as to which states fell in which regions of the country.

And so I find myself every term bringing in blank maps and giving mini lessons on the geography of the US, as well as world geography. Certainly Iraq is a focus of world attention right now. 97% of my students couldn't locate Iraq on a map. Only one student could correctly identify where Afghanistan was.

For parents with younger children, I highly recommend teaching geography on a daily basis. There are lots of blank maps available online. Start with the US and build from there. Add a state every day. Cut the maps apart and have the children put them back together like doing a puzzle.

We live in a global society today and it behooves us to know where everyone is located. How can we speak of world trends and world problems if we literally have no idea where in the world some (most) of the world's hot spots are? I had a student who once wrote a paper in which she outlined some solutions to the drug importation problem. She suggested that we erect the kind of border fence between Mexico and Colombia that is being suggested for between us and Mexico. Such a fence, she posited would be easier to patrol and would cut illegal drug running way down. When I pointed out that her solution was geographically impossible she thought I was wrong. When I showed her on a map where Colombia was physically located she was reallly puzzled. As she said: "From the way the newspapers talk, you get the idea that the Colombian druglords are almost our next door neighbors." Sigh.

Note: Just in case you were wondering, the Sunbelt states are: Florida, Texas, California*, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada**, New Mexico, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma.
*Not all of California is in the Sunbelt. The part that is comprises the 10 counties south of the 36th north latitude.
**Nevada includes only Clark County, which contains Las Vegas.