FAULT - Maphead - page 29

insisting that German geographical expertise gave the Nazis a leg up on the United States.
“ Geographicilliterates cannotbecountedontocreateapublicmindalerttothegeographic
factorsofeitherwarorpeace,”hescolded.Ifyoudon'tstudymapsenough,inotherwords,
you're studying for Hitler! Paging through back issues of The Journal of Geography, an
education journal, I discover a regular stream of articles bemoaning the sad state of geo-
graphic knowledge. David Helgren wouldn't have been surprised by his findings if he'd
reada 1950study byanOregonprofessornamedKennethWilliams,who'dsprungablank-
map test on his freshman class, with similar results: less than half his students could label
Wisconsin on a U.S. map, and only a third could find New Hampshire. At one school, 15
percent misplaced their own state.
What's remarkable about these stories is the surprise that journalists and educators al-
ways express about the kids' ineptitude. This tired dog-bites-man story is still capable of
grabbing the front page, even after a century of wear. Why? At some point, isn't this news
only if the kids suddenly start doing well on map quizzes?
Part of the blame can be chalked up to the tendency, in both academia and the media,
to attract readers to unsurprising developments by breathlessly overhyping them. Besides,
reporterstendtobejustasmuch“inthetank”onmapknowledgeasacademic geographers
are, since journalism is one of the few careers in which detailed global knowledge is
still expected and rewarded. * And because journalism and academia are somewhat insular
privateworlds,thesestoriesgetwrittenbypeoplewho are genuinelysurprisedthatcollege
students couldn't find Kenya or Chile on a map; in their odd bubble worlds of geographic
expertise, everyone would ace that test! Some people with odd obsessions become acutely
aware of how their expertise makes them different (cf. my childhood love of maps). But
others blithely assume that everyone shares their fanaticism, as you probably know if you
ever had a college roommate whose favorite band was Rush.
It's easy to see why these stories are popular with readers as well—they make us feel
better about ourselves. Reporters always cherry-pick the studies for items that make the
subjects lookasdumbaspossible.Three-quarters ofDavidHelgren'sstudentsknewwhere
theFalklandswere,butthat'snotshockinglybad.Infact,itseemsprettyreasonable.Sothe
half of the students who couldn't find London provided the headline instead. Such stud-
ies usually come with at least one easy-sounding task, like locating Canada or the Pacific
Ocean, that a small minority will still fail. Even if only 10 percent answer incorrectly, it'll
beabigpartofthestory,enablingustomarvelthatthesedumbkidscouldbotchaquestion
we certainly wouldhaveaced—no matter that thevastmajority ofrespondents actually got
it right. In a culture where geographic illiteracy is used as comic shorthand for stupidity,
nobody's willing to own up to a little map vagueness of their own.
But there's another possible way to explain the viruslike persistence of the geographic
illiteracy meme, and it's a little more sobering. What if this story has stuck around for cen-