TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071690/0716120.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6KB | 122 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 53

Quick! Name Togo's Capital


An inventive teacher battles against geographic illiteracy

By SAM ALLIS


    If you're in Senegal and want to get to Chad, which
countries would you cross to get there?

    Mmmm. Let me get back to you on that.

    No such luck if you are one of the 23 seventh-grade students
in David Smith's geography class at the Shady Hill School in
Cambridge, Mass. That question is typical of the brainteasers
he tosses out to his tribe throughout the school year in an
effort to teach them what the world looks like. By June, the
answer is as obvious as, say, the capital of Burkina Faso
(Ouagadougou).

    On the opening day of school in September, Smith, 46, gives
his students blank grids and tells them to draw their versions
of the globe. These are revealing documents. One student
skipped Europe altogether. Another put Antarctica at the North
Pole. A third had Asia due north of Europe, while a fourth
placed England squarely in Africa. "My first map was a complete
disgrace," admits Adrian Nivola. Recalls Tao Nguyen: "I drew
a big blob."

    Never mind. One in 7 Americans cannot find the U.S. on a
blank world map, and 1 in 4 cannot locate the Pacific Ocean,
according to a 1988-89 Gallup survey commissioned by the
National Geographic Society. In the same poll, American
students ages 18 to 24 came in dead last among ten countries
tested in geography. Half did not know that the Panama Canal
cuts sailing time between New York City and San Francisco.

    Smith puts away his students' charming first efforts and
goes to work, devoting two or three weeks to each continent or
land mass. Africa, hands down the toughest nut, warrants four
weeks. "It's got a lot of little countries and weird names,"
explains Sara Stonberg. There are no tricks to this process,
which is the point. Students spend two hours in class each week
and another couple of hours on homework, learning the
old-fashioned way. They memorize names and shapes, and draw
over and over the outlines of countries and land masses (the
northern edge of the Soviet Union is particularly nettlesome)
until they get them right. Creative use of mnemonics helps.
"Beware of hot gorillas eating nitrates casually, pop" is code
for the Central American countries of Belize, Honduras,
Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Smith
leavens the work load with games like geography baseball, in
which a home-run problem might be: name the 15 Soviet
republics. Later in the year, it would become: name each of
their capitals. Slowly, the contours of the world come into
focus.

    "They are learning how to learn," Smith explains. "They end
up dealing comfortably with maps and the ability to decode
information from maps, to use an atlas, read latitude and
longitude." The class accomplishes this in an atmosphere of
controlled chaos. Students throw questions at one another as
they pore over their material. "Does Tasmania belong to
Australia?" shouts one student. "Since Greenland belongs to
Denmark, does that make Copenhagen its capital?" asks another
of no one in particular.

    Just before the end of the school year, Smith gives his
students blank, 17-in. by 27-in. map boards and tells them to
try again. They have about 14 hours of class time over several
weeks to complete the job from memory. No tracing or reference
material is allowed. The results are breathtaking. The class
produces richly colored maps, complete with longitude and
latitude and close to 150 countries accurately identified and
located. Most are in proper scale. Many maps include capitals,
mountains and rivers. Some are festooned with whimsical
touches. Ethel Weld drew a school of fish, blowing bubbles, off
Montevideo. Alice Gearhart fashioned the lost city of Atlantis
in one part of her map and, inexplicably, the Grim Reaper in
another.

    "What is more important is not the map but the process,"
says Smith, who does not grade the final products. "The kids
take something they're completely terrified of in September and
in June draw the world and make it beautiful and enjoy the
process. When they arrive here, I tell them they'll end up with
150 countries, and they tell me, `No way.' As teachers, we face
kids who have attention spans of 20 seconds. This takes nine
months and goes against everything American society is pushing.
This is rote memory, enriched by mnemonics and practice and the
real use of knowledge -- the way people learn anything."

    Word of Smith's success is spreading. In the past year, he
has spoken in California, Kentucky, Missouri, Connecticut and
Massachusetts to educators interested in his approach to the
subject. Geography is making a comeback in this country after
a long decline, according to National Geographic Society staff
member Jane Tully. In Tennessee, for example, enrollment in
high school geography classes is up more than 100% since 1987.
"Geography simply got lost as a subject," she explains. "It got
folded into social studies after World War II, and it lost its
identity. This also meant that a whole generation of teachers
didn't learn geography, and it stopped being taught."

    By the end of the year, Smith's students feel confident, if
not smug, about their grasp of the world. "I used to hear about
countries on television and think they were over there
somewhere. I hadn't heard of half of them," admits Leila
Nesson. "Now I can figure out better what's going on in the
world. I'll always know that Angola is in Africa and not just
over there somewhere." Says Eleanor Pries, as she examines her
final map: "We saw our originals and we just laughed."