Geography: ‘Lost in Fog’

Your editorial about the National Geographic Society’s basic geography test (“Lost in a Fog,” Aug. 1) caused me to recall an episode in one of my college English classes for English-as-a-Second-Language students.

One day when we were discussing geographical and national names, a Latino student objected to our considering North America and South America as two separate continents. It was then that I learned that Hispanic Americans are taught to consider the two as one continent. I observed that Asia and Europe are part of an unseparated land mass, yet no one in the class objected to our considering them as two separate continents. When I later went to one of the encyclopedias, I read that the separation of Europe and Asia is a political idea with no basis in geological fact. I then assumed that our belief that the two Americas are separate continents and Hispanic America’s belief that they are one satisfy political needs.

The class discussion brought home to me the realization that every geographical fact has a human component and that the study of geography is both a physical science and a political science. Gilbert M. Grosvenor cites an economic need to spur us to want to understand the world and its geography, and your editorial implies a political need. Maybe the pocketbook appeal will cause us Americans to want to know where Tokyo is on a map, for it’s most unfortunately true that most Americans are politically apathetic and would probably answer, as years ago one native-born Valley College student did when asked where El Salvador is: “I don’t know. Somewhere.”

Perhaps economic reality will help us to want to understand that the church bell tolling for a dead Salvadoran is also tolling for us. Perhaps then we will learn where El Salvador is on the map--and Vietnam and Nicaragua. Maybe we will begin to understand why Hispanic Americans think of North and South America as one continent. Who knows? Maybe we will even begin to believe it ourselves.

STEPHEN H. STATHAM

Los Angeles