Divya Ramesh | Where the world has gone blank

On a train ride from Philadelphia to Princeton Junction last week, I overheard an elderly couple arguing over the geographical position of Malta, unable to decide whether it was in the Caribbean Sea or the Indian Ocean. From my seat across the aisle, I waited for the dispute to end, and when it didn’t, I used Google Maps to convince the couple that Malta floated in the Mediterranean Sea, not far off the coast of Sicily.

Although surprised by this incident, I chalked up the confusion to the amnesia that comes with old age. Perhaps Malta had been confused with Montserrat or the Maldives, I reasoned, giving the couple the benefit of the doubt.

A few days later, on the same route, I ran into a family playing one of those road trip geography games: name a country for every letter of the alphabet. I involuntarily turned when someone volunteered Yugoslavia for the letter U.

One explanation for these encounters is that the air on that train between Philadelphia and Princeton Junction messes with brain cells. A more likely explanation is that both these encounters are symptomatic of a larger problem: a national gap in geographic knowledge.

There’s already some awareness of this gap in the educational community as well as a strong desire to close it. Schools nationwide are making strides to integrate map activities into their curriculum and participate in geography bees in order to tackle the issue. Still, the last National Geographic Roper poll in 2006 found that only about 37 percent of Americans could find Iraq on a map. About half couldn’t locate New York.

When 20 percent of young Americans think that Sudan is a country in Asia, it’s time to look beyond including another Rand-McNally atlas on the classroom shelf in order to solve the issue.

Perhaps we should be turning to the omniscient oracle on 21st century knowledge: Google.

Many of us use Google maps to find our homes on the satellite view or to input multiple destinations into the system to calculate travel time. But, in a world where Google receives at least 1 billion unique hits a day, it could be used for more. Utilizing Google Maps as an educational tool introduces a novel solution to the national geographic disconnect.

Google Maps is interactive. For those who are overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of a map and stressed by busy street lines, it is possible to zoom in on a specific region. You can focus in on Poland, take note of the Baltic Sea to the north, and then zoom out to place that small puzzle piece into the larger jigsaw puzzle of the European continent.

Granted, an atlas with its world map on one page and regional maps on successive pages caters to this microcosm to macrocosm method of comprehension, but Google Maps has the added advantage of being cheaper and involving customized clicking and moving: individualizing the learning process while catering to both visual and kinesthetic learners.

The little yellow figurine that looks like one of Keith Haring’s brainchildren also works to make Google maps into an accessible learning tool. In many cases, the yellow figurine can be lifted from the side of the screen and placed onto the marked yellow roads.

This allows the viewer to see the actual road as though standing upon it along with the surrounding scenery. Thanks to the caricature on the side of the screen that I have nicknamed Keith Haring Junior, I have vicariously visited the tree-filled neighborhoods in Nashville, Tenn., as well as seen the flat landscape and occasional pothole on Topeka’s main highways. While Google Map trotting doesn’t replace globetrotting to learn, it’s not a bad substitute, especially for those places that you’re curious about but can’t visit.

If fifth graders in America were to Google Map hop from Springfield to Ames with their yellow stick-figure friend, they’d have a visual cue as well as a textbook fact: middle America, home to the rolling plains.

55 percent of fifth graders struggle with that fact. A Google road trip could help them get it right.

Yet, Google tourism has its disadvantages. I zoom in on Nairobi and click the yellow streets of Reykjavik, having only a vague idea of the cultures there. Still, when visiting a place is not feasible, Google “tourism” is an affordable and easily-accessible secondary option: immersing us in the topography and geography of region, teaching us through vicarious experience, and planning our trips without budgeting for jet lag.

Divya Ramesh is a rising College sophomore from Princeton Junction, N.J. Her email address is divyaramesh20@gmail.com. You can follow her @DivyaRamesh11. “Through My Eyes” runs biweekly during the summer.

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