From the Archives - 'Teaching Geography: A Valuable Enterprise' (1997)

I first wrote about this topic in the late 1980s. This article appeared in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot on April 7, 1997, under the headline "Teaching Geography: A Valuable Enterprise."

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Lord Chesterfield, the 18th century English statesman, once remarked: "The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary; but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveller.''

Healy Tower, Georgetown University

When I was a child in elementary school, my teachers insisted that my classmates and I draw maps of all the major countries and regions of the world. Being all thumbs when it comes to handling a crayon or pencil, my grades were always low, mostly Cs. Nonetheless, I learned geography: I learned where things are and the relationship of one thing to another.

Today's students are apparently not being taught where things are. The serious teaching of geography in the schools seems to have disappeared. This is distressing.

For example, a few years ago at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University - America's premier institution for the teaching of international affairs, alma mater of President Bill Clinton - almost a third of the brightest and most competitive freshmen in the school's history failed a basic geography test, even after taking a one-credit course in the subject. Earlier, of the 225 students who tried to test out of the course, only 23 passed, and of those, 16 were not U.S. citizens.

The questions on this exam were not difficult, but basic: What is the capital of China? Where is the Persian Gulf? Who are the two main ethnic groups of Cyprus? Through what countries does the Danube River flow?

Other, similar tests and surveys show similarly disturbing results. Many high school students tested a couple of years ago could not find the United States on a world map, a good fraction pointed to Brazil as the answer.

The consequences of this ignorance are grave. As Georgetown Dean Charles E. Pirtle put it, "How can we expect our students to understand news reports out of the Persian Gulf when they don't know where it is, much less where Kuwait, Bahrain and the Straits of Hormuz are?''

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick notes that "many of our most bitter foreign-policy disputes are a direct consequence of the fact that Americans decided sometime not to study geography anymore. It is impossible to think sensibly about foreign affairs without knowing what is where.''

Jeane Kirkpatrick photo by Rick Sincere

Ambassador Kirkpatrick explains: "In foreign policy, geography is destiny. What gives the U.S. a vastly different stake in Nicaragua than in, say, Burundi? Burundi is my example of a very remote place. I have been there, and I can testify that it is a very remote place. I do not think we should be indifferent to the hardships of its people, but I do believe that Burundi is less important to us than Nicaragua. The difference is rooted in geography.''

Knowledge about the static facts of geography - as real estate brokers say, "location, location, location'' - is important because other social factors can be so fluid and dynamic. When Ambassador Kirkpatrick commented on the differences between Nicaragua and Burundi, a Marxist regime in Nicaragua was threatening the security of the United States and its allies in the Western Hemisphere. Today, Nicaragua is free (if still troubled) while Burundi is amidst a maelstrom of conflict and pestilence that includes refugee flows, civil war in neighboring Zaire and Rwanda and endemic ethnic violence. Yet without knowing the facts about these countries - territorial size, population, economic products and neighbors - we cannot wisely judge the importance of recent changes and coming trends. As citizens, we cannot make well-grounded decisions about U.S. policy toward these places.

The new standards of learning and standards of accreditation for Virginia schools include a renewed emphasis on geography (among the other social sciences). The new standards suggest strongly that geography be taught in grade 10, although the Arlington public schools have a nationally recognized, model program that requires geography in grade 8. The Arlington sequence is more logical than the state's version, because teaching geography in eighth grade girds students with the conceptual tools and facts they need to learn world history, economics and other high school subjects. Every Arlington student I have encountered remembers the geography course fondly, and all agree that it definitely prepared them for future studies.

The task of other Virginia schools is clear: Reintroduce geography teaching as a separate discipline with an emphasis on facts. Children should be able to name the state capitals at an early age, the capitals of foreign countries soon afterward, and by high school should be able to fill in the blanks on a world map, naming oceans and rivers, mountain ranges and islands, cities and nations. Should we expect less?

Memo: Richard Sincere is co-chair of the Social Studies Advisory Committee for Arlington Public Schools.

Albemarle County, Va: "We're Number 69!"

Last month I noted that Hanover County, Virginia, had been rated as the eighth most conservative-friendly county in the United States by The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson's new on-line news site.

Two other Virginia localities, Chesterfield County and Virginia Beach, also made the top 100 list.

Now The Daily Caller is ranking the top 100 liberal-friendly counties in the country.  Yesterday it listed 81-100; today it listed 61-80.

It turns out that our own Albemarle County (including, it seems, according to the description, the independent city of Charlottesville that the county encircles) is ranked number 69.  This is what The Daily Caller has to say about our liberal community:

69. Albemarle County, Va.
Largest city: Charlottesville

Charlottesville is an independent city, but the county seat of surrounding Albemarle County is Charlottesville. Just as well, sicne the two entities are basically one and the same. Thomas Jefferson, a native of the county, set up his last great project in Charlottesville — the University of Virginia. The university dominates the economy and culture of the county. The county correspondingly leans Democratic, and Charlottesville is more liberal than the county itself.

Albemarle is snuggled, on the list, between #70 Ulster County, New York (where Woodstock is located; enough said) and #68 Kauai County, Hawai'i.  (Intriguingly, Hawai'i County is #67 and Maui County is #66.)

The rest of the top 100 will be posted in 20-county increments on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We will find out later this week how highly ranked are Arlington County and the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church -- and whether any other Virginia counties qualify for the honor of being "most liberal."

I know a lot of progressives in and around Charlottesville are going to be grumbling about their low ranking.  They'll do their best on November 2 to change that for next year's survey.



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Hanover County, Va.: "We're Number 8!"

The Daily Caller has compiled a list of the 100 most conservative counties in the United States.  Virginia has only three counties on the list, but Hanover County, near Richmond, earned the number eight spot:

8. Hanover County, Va.
Largest community: Mechanicsville

Some parts of Hanover County are two miles from Richmond. Other parts of the southern border are more than 15 miles from the city. Because of this, Hanover County is a hybrid suburban/exurban/rural county. Two miles from Richmond is suburban Mechanicsville. In the exurbs is Cold Harbor National Cemetery, which commemorates the Battle of Cold Harbor fought here in 1864. The rural section is where King’s Dominion amusement park is located. The county gave an astounding 76 percent of the vote to Bob McDonnell.

The Daily Caller could also have mentioned that Hanover County is the home base for Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling.

The two other Virginia localities that made the list were Virginia Beach (55), which is actually a city, and Chesterfield County (29), also a suburb of Richmond.

Here's the entry on Virginia Beach:

55. Virginia Beach, Va.
Co-terminus with City of Virginia Beach

Virginia Beach is a county masquerading as a city. Lrge parts of the county to the south are undeveloped. The isolated beach town of Sandbridge is more like the Outer Banks of North Carolina than the boardwalk area of Virginia Beach. The Hampton Roads have been called the best natural harbor on earth, and accordingly this is the main Atlantic base of operations for the Navy. It is culturally conservative, as this is where Pat Robertson and his Christian Broadcasting Network are from. While John McCain narrowly won the city-county, Virginia Beach native Bob McDonnell received about 64 percent of the vote last November.

Of course, Bob McDonnell is not a "native" of Virginia Beach; he was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Fairfax County.

And here's the Daily Caller's take on Chesterfield County:

29. Chesterfield County, Va.
Largest community: Midlothian

For those looking to locate the change of the Old South into the New, Chesterfield County is a textbook example. Chesterfield contains the southern suburbs of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. The area was tobacco country, giving name to the once prominent Chesterfield cigarettes. About 50 or 60 years ago, the rough-hewn nature of the county changed when Richmond, a city with much racial turmoil, began to move out to the suburbs. The county has moved in a white-collar direction, focused on the emerging edge city of Midlothian, a former mining community. Historically conservative, Chesterfield supported Bob McDonnell in last year’s governor’s race by a 2-to-1 margin.

For those who are curious, here are the Daily Caller's criteria for inclusion on the Top 100 list:

* How counties have voted in the past two presidential elections
* Median household income, factoring in cost of living
* Home ownership percentage
* Married family percentage
* Civilian veteran percentage
* State unionization laws, whether a right-to-work state or mandatory union state
* State tax burden–state income taxes, factoring in available deductions
* State concealed weapons laws, ease of carrying weapon legally
* State weekly religious attendance, as measured by Pew
* State abortion laws, as measured by Americans United for Life
* Intangibles, such things as a long conservative history, an ingrained military culture, prominent right-wing politicians

There are two qualifications:

A “county” must be a county-level unit, which includes parishes in Louisiana, independent cities in Virginia and boroughs/municipalities in Alaska

The population must be over 50,000 as of 2008.

That first qualification explains the presence of Virginia Beach on the list; the second qualification explains the absence of Charlottesville (in addition to all the other criteria that would have excluded it).

But here's a question: Why are only three Virginia counties on this list while Minnesota gets four (!) and Wisconsin gets three, too?  One would expect multiple entries from Texas and Alabama, but the Progressive strongholds of Wisconsin and Minnesota?



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