Geography’s Role in Education

* Re “Off the Map? Oxnard School District to Consider Dropping Geography as Graduation Requirement,” Nov. 8.

I think it is ill-advised to assume that students are garnering adequate geographic knowledge through their social studies classes.

In my 16 years experience as a professor in physical geography at Cal State Northridge, I have learned that one of the largest obstacles to student learning is that their mental map rarely extends more than a few feet from their back door.

In a metrology class I was struggling to make students understand the direction of airflow around high- and low-pressure systems using weather over Asia as a model. The students were confounded. My teaching problem was resolved when I discovered that about half of them thought Asia was in the Southern Hemisphere.

A colleague was attempting to explain the interaction of cold and warm air masses over the United States. He patiently explained that cold air masses moved southward from Canada and warm air masses northward from Mexico.

“Yes,” said a student, pointing to a map, “but which one is Canada and which one is Mexico?”

My two days of teaching about the El Nino weather phenomenon culminated in a computer exercise in which students were required to answer questions about real-time sea and surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. I moved around the computer lab assisting the students with their exercises. One girl was staring at the screen for a long time before she finally raised her hand. She wanted to know which one was the Pacific Ocean.

Clearly, many of our students lack even the most basic geographic fundamentals that would enable them to understand world trade, foreign relations, immigration, geological and metrological processes or history.

School officials need to remember that an understanding of the basic physical and cultural nature of the Earth is key to understanding social and political interactions or conflicts.

The primary goal of high school education is not passing a one-time test. It should be considered the minimum level of education for an informed citizenship, and geography in all of its aspects is a major component.

JULIE LAITY

Camarillo