It took six decades, a college degree, two advanced degrees and a career of college teaching before I finally finished my fourth-grade education.
It was in fourth grade that I first studied geography. Not alone among my classmates, I was fascinated by the great wonder and bounty of America, my homeland. Particularly engaging were the special natural places that tickled my childhood imagination: great canyons, sandstone arches, natural bridges, colorful caverns, timeless trees, majestic mountains and mighty rivers and waterfalls. Someday, I thought, I would explore them all.
And so I did, finally getting to those remaining few out-of-the-way places (for me). Last fall, I meandered up and around New Hampshire’s Mount Washington (the highest point in the Northeast) and enjoyed the cold water sprays of Lake Superior on my face.
Just the other day, I completed my home state geography course by flying in a Meridian turbo-prop aircraft over many of my peaceful green-leafed fishing haunts that previously I had only mapped from the ground.
Over my lifetime, America’s natural wonders haven’t changed much, but the teaching of geography has — a lot. As we see from surveys and reports on the Internet, young people’s knowledge of geography is abysmal. Indeed, about half of American children in one survey could not point out New York on a map.
This deficiency is emblematic of the social and political problems America faces in a new global era that seems to be fracturing the once proud and precious American Union.
One root of these problems is that, unlike in my grammar school days, geography is not taught as a single subject. Instead, it is rolled into Social Studies, a plethora of loosely related subjects all fighting for space in new curriculums. Geography gets short shrift. Teaching geography, as a single subject would benefit America’s people in numerous ways.
Studying natural geography raises and answers existential questions.
Where am I? What is this place? It offers symbolic meanings, fires the imagination and evokes consideration of higher laws and powers.
Pondering such questions is a lifetime improvement assignment.
Other areas of geography study also inform life-long understanding.
Urban geography questions the best and worst of our man-made environment. Economic geography explores the changing resources and environments in our land. The resurgence of geo-political thinking and the explosion of geographic technology offer pathways to understanding global change. Finally, geographical understanding helps us re-assert our American identity in a corporatist globalism that seeks to drown it.
Geography has its own three R’s: Reverence. Restoration. Revitalization. Consider our national parks. As a Ken Burns documentary, “National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” points out, the founders of the system expected visitors to come back home re-energized, with a deeper feeling for the nation. These wild and majestic places were thought to be character builders for citizens.
To know our place in America is to know its great places. They tell us we are home. They tell us we belong. They remind us it is good to be here.
Changing the landscape of geography studies and knowledge is no easy task. Young people (millennials) are especially disinterested. But there are many dedicated groups sponsoring programs to counter current trends.
A most innovative effort is, The National Geographic Society’s Geography Bee, which was held in Washington D.C., last week. In November, NGS commemorates 100 years of maps (remember them?) Google “maps” gives you a route picture … from A to B, but maps show you the bigger picture, how a state or nation is put together and how everything fits in.
Flying back into New Jersey the other day, I focused on the bigger picture as we followed Interstate 78, large water impoundments to the left and right. But, 7,000 feet directly below me, something jutted jarringly out of the landscape, its’ tan roof glazed by low angular rays of a weakening sun. This glowing monument was my favorite McDonald’s at Clinton, New Jersey, a haven for senior drinks and grilled chicken salads for the tired fisherman!)
Then I had a scary thought. What if McDonald’s (or other franchises) were to serve as new map markers for a new globalist corporate/geography course? Yow!
As folk singer Woody Guthrie expresses so passionately in his ballads, America is a magnificent land that belongs to you and me. That feeling of wonder, that sense of place are rooted in the geography of the land and in the imagination it inspires in its citizens. From its hidden places to its urban parks and squares America the Beautiful awaits us.
This summer, expand your consciousness. Experience the 3 R’s of geography.
Silvio Laccetti is a retired professor of humanities and social sciences. His latest book, “An American Commentary,” has won finalist distinction in the Montaigne Medal competition.
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