How to Raise a Girl’s Aspirations: Put a Map of the World in Her Hands

“Mt. Erebus is a volcano on which continent?” That’s the question that won Susannah Batko-Yovino, a sixth-grader from Altoona, Pa., first place in the 1990 National Geographic Geography Bee. Started after the 1989 release of a Gallup poll that rated young Americans last among students from 10 countries in their knowledge of geography, the bee is celebrating its 11th anniversary this year. It involves 72,000 fourth- to eighth-graders annually, culminating in May, when 57 champs (from U.S. states, territories, dependencies and some military bases) head to Washington, D.C., for the finals, with a $25,000 college scholarship as the first prize.

A recent surge in the number of college and graduate-level geography students, and a 1995 study showing that 70% of young Americans have “at least a basic understanding” of the subject, suggest that initiatives like the bee are helping to improve U.S. students’ mastery of geography. But such indicators don’t explain why few girls qualify for the nationals (there were just four in 1998), and why only one girl has ever claimed the bee’s top prize.

This is a matter close to my heart because my mother taught junior high school geography. It is chiefly because of her that I became a traveler. History, English, math, science and the arts were all important. But to my mind, exposure to geography can lead to broad, interesting futures for young people instead of lives circumscribed by the shopping mall.

So when Margaret Bowles, associate head of academic affairs at Viewpoint School in Calabasas, invited me to attend her school’s geography bee on Jan. 6, I jumped at the chance. Eighteen fresh-faced 10- to 14-year-olds competed in the gymnasium, with the whole middle school looking on. I didn’t get every answer right, but a boy named Ara Kardashian did, qualifying him to take a test to see if he goes on to the state contest on April 9. Among the contestants were seven girls, including seventh-grader Samantha Ames, who hung in until the final round.

Still, I left wondering why girls don’t take to geography as passionately and successfully as boys do. Several years ago, organizers of the geography bee commissioned a study to find out. The results, released in 1996, showed that virtually the same number of boys and girls enter the bee, that the questions aren’t gender-biased and that competing in public doesn’t intimidate one sex more than the other. Still, a disproportionately high number of boys reach advanced stages of the competition because, as the study says, there are probably “small, but real differences between boys and girls in terms of their knowledge of and approach to geography.”

Lots of explanations have been offered for this, such as tests showing that boys have more highly developed spatial skills. When asked to list the things they like, boys include maps and atlases while girls generally don’t. The more equitable ratio of females to males who pursue geography at college and postgraduate levels suggests that girls take an interest in the subject at a later age. Then, too, a study done in England found that parents allow boys to roam farther away from home. For me, this really strikes a chord because when I was in junior high I took long bike rides through suburban St. Louis--not for the exercise, but to find out where Forest Park was and what kind of houses people lived in on the south side. In effect, I was studying geography on a bike. It makes me sad to think that these days parents have more reason to keep their children close to home. Especially their girls.

Susannah Batko-Yovino, now a junior majoring in international studies at Johns Hopkins, thinks the causes of girls’ lower performance in the bee go deeper still. “Academic success for girls is not as valued as it is for boys,” she says. “And girls tend to shy away from competitions.”

Thanks to the efforts of developmental psychologists such as Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan, co-authors of “Meeting at the Crossroads” (Harvard University Press, $19.95), it now seems evident that growing up is an altogether different experience for girls and boys. Confident and confrontational 8- or 9-year-old girls generally turn uncertain and conformist by 12 or 13, willing to do whatever it takes to be “good.” Brown and Gilligan call it “psychological foot binding.” I would never have had the nerve to enter a geography bee in seventh or eighth grade, preferring more “gender appropriate” contests such as cheerleading tryouts.

I’ve no need for my pompoms now, and even though I eventually found a geography-related career, there were plenty of missteps along the way, including a whole decade when I thought marriage was the most important thing in life. It was important, but so was my job, and the Gulf War, and the AIDS epidemic in Africa. I’d like girls to learn this sooner than I did. Some years ago, educators realized girls weren’t pursuing math and science. “So we targeted these subjects,” says Mary Lee Elden, director of the geography bee, “while geography fell by the wayside.” Now we ought to target geography, for girls especially. So give a girl a map, or take her on a trip, or encourage her to compete in the bee. Batko-Yovino doesn’t think about Mt. Erebus much now. But she still knows she’d have to go to Antarctica to climb it.

Contact the National Geography Bee, National Geographic Society, 1145 17th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036. Schools must register by Oct. 15; the fee is $30.