EDUCATION WATCH : Geography Lesson

Sometime during a previous spasm of educational reform, geography as a separate subject largely dropped out of the curriculum. The results show. A nine-nation survey commissioned by the National Geographic Society two years ago discovered that most Americans were staggeringly unaware of what the world they live in looks like; one in seven couldn’t even locate the United States on a blank map. David Smith, who teaches seventh-graders in Cambridge, Mass., is trying to do something to fill this void of ignorance. And as Time magazine recently reported, he’s doing very well indeed.

There’s nothing new about Smith’s methods. In two hours of class work and two hours of homework each week, he has his kids learn about continents, oceans, countries, rivers, mountains and capitals the old-fashioned way. They draw maps, over and over again. They memorize, they use mnemonics. After nine months the kids can draw the world with up to 150 countries correctly located and labeled.

What have they learned? They have absorbed some basic information that will be useful to them for the rest of their lives. They have taken a big step toward understanding international economics and the physical and cultural diversity of the planet. Smith’s methods, heavy on rote learning, aren’t in vogue. What he is showing is that they can still be valid, still effective, still able to stimulate young minds to think. And that, of course, is what teaching is about.