Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
FAULT
n
.:
a fracture in the earth's crust, along
which parallel displacement occurs
—RONALD REAGAN, OFFERING
A 1982 TOAST—IN BRASILIA
O
ntheveryfirstdayoftheUniversityofMiami'sspringsemester in1983,assistant pro-
fessor
DavidHelgrensprang
apopquizinhisintroductorygeographyclasses. Hegaveeach
ofhis128students,mostlybusinessandliberalartsmajors,ablankworldmap.Theywereto
pinpoint the locations of thirty different places, ranging from the obvious (Miami, London,
the South Pacific) to the then-newsworthy (the USSR, the Falkland Islands) to the slightly
more exotic (New Guinea, Cairo). They didn't need to write their names on their papers but
were instructed to try their best.
Dr. Helgren, a five-year veteran of freshman geography instruction, wasn't expecting the
students to blow him out of the water with their astute global knowledge. As a rule, geo-
graphy professors are pretty cynical about the public's command of geography. (In your
school days, did you assume your teachers were all gossiping about your personal ineptness
in smoke-filled break rooms? Well, you were probably right.) But if the scores were lousy,
at least the department could use them to seek increased university funding for geography
instruction.Helgrencouldgivehisstudentsasimilarquizattheendofthesemesterasaway
to benchmark their improvement. He was coming up for tenure soon, after all.
But when the results came back, even Helgren was a little shocked. He had graded the
maps, he thought, pretty leniently, but more than half his students still couldn't find Chica-
go. Or Iceland or Quebec or the Amazon rain forest. Fewer than one in three knew where
Moscow and Sydney were. Eleven of his Miami students had even misplaced Miami! It's
hard to imagine an easier item on a test like this than the city where all the students live, un-
less you add two more items—“Your Ass” and “A Hole in the Ground”—and give credit to
anyone who doesn't mark them in exactly the same spot. Helgren circulated the depressing
scores tohisdeanandafewothercampus contacts butheardnothingback.Heassumed that
was the end of the story.
Amonth later,the student newspaper wrote asmall article onthe quiz, afirst tiny domino
in the unlikely chain that would completely change Helgren's life. Both local Miami papers
picked up on the story in
The Miami Hurricane
and sent reporters to interview Helgren.
