Congratulations Arjun!

Why is this kid wearing an Illinois sweater? Where's the Oregon pride (or, better yet, Beaverton)?

I'd love to see geography understood as more than simply "where is [arbitrary place] located?" Unfortunately, that's how it's taught until one gets to the university level and reduces the discipline to little more than trivia.

Nevertheless, the kid's knowledge is impressive.

what part of geography goes beyond where things are located?

Well -- to pick an obvious answer -- why are things located where they are. And what is the significance of that?

Jerusalem (to take an example) isn't just a city at a set of coordinates, is it? Of course not. It's a place loaded with meaning -- often contradictory and competing.

To take another, perhaps more apropos example, the main city of Timis County, Timişoara, has had an interesting demographic history. If you take a look at the chart at that link, you'll see a number of trends (Large numbers of Germans eventually declining, relatively large numbers of Jews dwindling to almost nothing, relatively few Romanians eventually becoming an undisputed majority, etc.) which are all totally related to geography; The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and that particular province ending up as part of Romania instead of, say, Hungary, is a function both of political geography as well as the geographic distribution of language and ethnicities.

In short, the idea that geography is just "where things are" is as laughably parochial as the notion that history amounts to little more than "names and dates" or that Beowulf is just a bunch of words strung together as sentences.

Carla, I actually watched this competition via satellite and while I applauded Arjun's victory - I didn't view it as a win for democRATS / public schools as you do.

I view it as a win for hard work, discipline, dedication.

Arjun, I salute you!

As Russell Baker once pointed out, Americans' geographical knowledge (at least among males) began to decline after Playboy magazine became established and school kids no longer had to look at National Geographic to see naked women.

Arjun obviously didn't need that kind of inducement.

And I totally agree with Vincent. Geography is far more than places on a map. Jared Diamond, author of "Collapse," is a geography professor.

Posted by: Gil Johnson | May 22, 2009 9:28:05 PM

As Russell Baker once pointed out, Americans' geographical knowledge (at least among males) began to decline after Playboy magazine became established and school kids no longer had to look at National Geographic to see naked women.

Very true. Now it's limited to who we're killing and where we're stationed. I was talking to my sister about this the other day. When we were kids, in the late 60s, she named her Persian cat, "Princess Fluff of Tehran", and nobody ever had a clue what "Tehran" was. (OK, it was the midwest). Now we know Tehran.

It's sad. Try this on someone that knows geography. Pick a US or North American city, and ask the person what is directly across the Atlantic, on the same longitude. Most people are off by a continent. Very few have a good mental picture of the extent of the Indian Ocean. Here's a good mental image. Imagine if there were only sea between Dallas and the North Pole. And it touched Russia on the East AND West. That's a big ocean, but it's gap on the map in most of our consciousnesses.

This young man is wearing an "Illinois" shirt (or any other state) because he's already thinking about college (maybe he's already enrolled in the local Beaverton CC) - more power to him: you go for it Arjun! Notice at least he's wearing Beaver colors! My son (#2) just got his "shingle" from UO (finally after some 6 years of fiddling around) in Geography. All of a sudden he's realised that the world's really opened up for him. Geography is a major that is a real door opener since you can bridge to many other professional and/or applied situations, and not just sit around and figure out place names.

Vincent: what you're describing isn't necessarily geography, IMO. It's history and civics and anthropology. Those things are related to geography--but they aren't that particular discipline.

That may be your opinion, Carla, but I think most academic geographers would disagree with you.

What you're describing is the cross-discipline, holistic education that some schools lack, some don't.

Geography, like history, is a very synthetic discipline, Carla. You're correct to note that what I'm describing is "cross-disipline" and "holistic"... but that's what geography is. Most geographers also have backgrounds in history, economics, geology, hydrology, climate change, environmental science, planning, etc. If geography is, by its very nature, synthetic, why not teach it that way?

The "countries and capitals" paradigm is almost worthless. Why on earth should anyone care where Jerusalem or Moscow or Tblisi is if they're given no context as to why these places are important?

In any case, your limited perspective on the subject is forgivable and certainly not uncommon. That's chiefly because the primary and secondary school systems have treated Geography as something of a throw-away subject for at least 20 years and probably more. Every non-university geography textbook I've ever encountered (and that certainly includes the one that I had in high school) was a total wreck and totally stuck in mode of "countries and capitals" with a smattering of safe and superficial cultural information thrown in for good measure.

My point is that if Americans have a flawed understanding of world geography, they also have a seriously lacking understanding of what the discipline of Geography actually entails. I don't think peoples' understanding of world geography is going to get any better as long as we're stuck on "what is the capital of Turkey"? A better question would be "Istanbul is the capital of Turkey. Why is that important?"

I absolutely guarantee that geography is far more than what you seem to imagine it as. If our educational system could move away from the stale and mostly useless "countries and capitals" paradigm, perhaps future Americans would start looking at Geography as something important and vital, instead of merely trivia.

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