RECKONING - Maphead - page 96

“What about your parents? Are they more nervous than you?”
“ Oh, yes.” “Yes yes yes!” “Definitely.”
I'msittingnexttoDougOetter,thegeographyprofessorwhohelpsruntheGeorgiastate
bee. Seeing students excel at geography is a pleasant switch for him. “My college students
aregeekedouttothemax,”hesays—proficient,thankstoAPexams,ingenetics,cellstruc-
ture, amino acids, electron shells. “But you ask them about basic geography or earth scien-
ce—cumuluscloudsorbiomes—andthey'reclueless.Iliterallyhavetostartwithlongitude
and latitude. They don't know what causes the changing of the seasons, or the tides.” Just
likeancientcivilizationscreatinglegendsaboutpomegranatesandthingstoexplainnatural
phenomena, I think. Except that these kids probably don't care that they don't know.
Academic geographers actually criticized the idea of the bee when National Geographic
firstannouncedit,surethatitwouldhurttheprestigeofgeographytoreduceittothestatus
of mere facts, spelling-bee fodder. “ Rote memorization must be emphasized as the level
of competitive difficulty increases,” predicted Marc Eichen of Queens College in one geo-
graphy journal. “The geographic facts would need to become increasingly trivial to pro-
duce a winner.”
But Oetter disagrees. You can't write without learning the alphabet first, he says, and
you can't do sophisticated work in geography if you don't know where places are. “These
kids are going to show up in college already knowing that alphabet. They're going to write
the geographic novels of tomorrow.”
Behind us, tomorrow's scholars are currently trying to figure out which way the bus is
headed, with the help of Shiva's compass watch. There is also some disagreement on the
identity of the world's leading gold producer. “South Africa! No, China. Yeah, yeah, Ch-
ina.”(Correct. China passed South Africa in 2008.)
Encouraged by how quickly the kids on the bus seem to have decompressed, I track
down Benjamin Salman's mom, Sarah, at the picnic. She's balancing a plate of barbecue
on one knee.
“How'd he take it?” I ask.
“He's okay,” says Sarah. “He was disappointed, but now it's okay.”
The picnic is held every year at a bucolic farm in rural Maryland. As the sun sinks
toward the oak-and-hickory forest to the west of the picnic grounds, gaggles of kids are
running around in the grass. When they're not squirming behind a National Geographic
microphone, it's easy to believe Mary Lee Elden's contention that “these are normal kids
who just happen to be bright.” There are games of horseshoes and pickup basketball going
on. Kenji Golimlim, a finalist from the Detroit area, might be the shortest contestant in the
bee—he barely comes up to my elbow, and I'm not a tall man—but I watch him happily
shoot hoops on a ten-foot rim for quite a while. Most of these kids just met a day or two
ago, but they seem to be fast friends already.