Where in the world is geography?

Leslie Newell Peacock:

None of the students in Dr. Brooks Green's geography classes last week could tell him where the Strait of Hormuz was. One of his history students said she knew it was in the Middle East — somewhere.

Green, who is a professor at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, is dismayed by the fact that none of the 46 students he quizzed knew about what some consider the most important spot on earth currently: The narrow sea lane that provides the only passage to the open ocean for the oil from the Persian Gulf states.

If students don't know where a country is, or a people, how can they understand them?

With the change in the way Arkansas schools are to teach geography, he fears, ignorance over the world we live in is going to get worse.

Thanks to an increased emphasis on world history in middle school (it was previously taught in elementary grades), geography as a stand-alone course has gone out the window. It will now be “embedded” as one of four social studies “strands” (history, economics and civics are the other three) into other classes in grades K-8.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 14, 2007 10:12 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas