As recently as 1989 The General Assembly (State Legislature) of Pennsylvania passed House Resolution No. 189 declaring a Geography Awareness Week" in the State. It would have been more fitting for the U.S. Congress to pass it but the results would probably have been equally fruitless. Unless there is drastic action Americans will continue to rank as among the most unaware peoples of their surroundings both cultural-historical and environmental-physical.
The Pennsylvania resolution included among its many citations that….
WHEREAS The United States of America is a truly unique nation with diverse landscapes bountiful resources a distinctive multiethnic population and a rich cultural heritage all of which contribute to the status of the United States as a world power; and Historically geography has aided Americans in understanding the wholeness of their vast nation and the great abundance of its natural resources;
Whereas Geography today offers perspectives and information in understanding ourselves our relationship to the earth and our interdependence with other peoples of the world; and Statistics illustrate that a significant number of American students could not find the United States on a world map and Departments of geography are being eliminated from American institutes of higher learning thus endangering the discipline of geography in the United States; and Traditional geography has virtually disappeared from the curricula of American schools while still being taught as a basic subject in other countries including the United Kingdom Canada Japan and the Soviet Union;
It is therefore all the more regrettable as well as a disgrace that a heretofore recognized prestigious publishing house that specializes in atlases - Harper Collins one of the worlds largest publishing houses that sells English-language atlases to schools in the Middle East has omitted labeling Israel as if it were some unclaimed nameless faceless territory. Collins Middle East Atlases show Jordan and Syria extending to the Mediterranean and clearly mark the position of the West Bank. Looking at this atlas Haifa Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are all missing but we can see Gaza clearly marked. In fact no other city in the entire region is indicated! (Gaza ber alles!) This is clearly voodoo black magic like sticking pins in a doll and an indicator of how low the publisher has sunk! This atlas will simply encourage blind rejection of reality that has characterized the Palestinian narrative" (by their political leadership) for the last 66 years.
Collins Middle East Atlases show Jordan and Syria extending to the Mediterranean but clearly mark the position of the West Bank. Dr Jane Clements director of the Council of Christians and Jews has criticized the publisher and argued that Maps can be a very powerful tool in terms of de-legitimizing the other and can lead to confusion rather than clarity.
Collins Bartholomew the subsidiary of Harper Collins that specializes in maps said that including Israel would have been unacceptable" to their customers in the Gulf and the amendment incorporated local preferences." Of course this position would necessitate wholesale revision of many other maps where boundaries continued to be disputed and would equally be as serious a distortion of reality as using a different set of longitude coordinates instead of Greenwich England as was the case well into the 1880s before which German maps used Berlin French maps Paris American maps Washington D.C. and Russian maps St. Petersburg as the Prime Meridian of zero degrees longitude.
In 1843 Jared Sparks (1789-1866) a future President of Harvard (1849-54) while a student there authored a clarion call for the inclusion of geography in the curriculum of Americas colleges. Sparks spoke at a Harvard College debating group and began… Few studies are more useful few more easily attained and none more universally neglected than that of geography. He developed this thesis noting geographys importance in understanding historical events as well as contemporary commerce and political occurrences at home and abroad. His talk ended with calling for the explicit inclusion of geography in the course of liberal education rather than leaving students to their own devices to acquire its gifts of understanding.
Did the last hundred and fifty years since Sparks statement - witness the dreadful experience of Americas neglect of geography - come to the attention of our leaders in education and political life given the woeful isolationist provincial attitudes or base geographic ignorance prevailing on the eve of World Wars I and II Vietnam or Iraq?
Geographers legitimately complain that their discipline is misunderstood by the general public for whom it remains a hangover from primary and secondary schools where it meant the rote memorization of inventories: the capitals of countries the heights of mountains and lengths of rivers; facts such as China has lots of rice and Arabia lots of oil…. In our grandparents time they learned that Belgium and the Northern Midlands of England had lots of coal but today these regions have exhausted their supplies and are now net importers.
Geography is not a static inventory of unrelated facts. Knowing the location of landscapes climates industries and cultures without understanding the relationships between them is much like knowing important dates in history without understanding how events created changes and have influenced the political economic and social realities in different societies. History is more than a calendar and geography is more than a map.
Geography explains and analyzes why things are where they are and not somewhere else. Even if we have not personally experienced earthquakes volcanoes floods or famines we are all more aware today through television and sophisticated techniques of remote sensing of the changing face of the earths surface--rivers change their course mountains rise coastlines sink fertile cropland may become exhausted through poor techniques of cultivation and irrigation may make the desert bloom.
Nothing can be understood apart from the place where it occurs. No event situation problem in nature or human history has much meaning until it is examined against its geographical background. Geography studies the location extent distribution frequency and interaction of all significant elements of the human and physical environment on the earths surface. They are not just present or absent but found to co-exist in recognizable patterns. They do so not in random unpredictable relationships by accident or coincidence. Their distribution and extent whether it is mineral wealth traffic flows good agricultural soils pollution health hazards population growth or economic development and political alliances can often be explained and even predicted.
Even if European states jump on the Palestine bandwagon (at the moment only Cyprus Malta and Sweden recognize Palestine") and agree uniformly to recognize it as the 23rd Arab state these actions would still have no authoritative legal effect nor will any atlas change reality on the ground. This is because inter alia the governing treaty on statehood - the Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1934) stipulates a number of explicit criteria that always must be satisfied irrespective of recognition and first and foremost among these is effective control over a distinct territory with specific boundaries. Historic atlases may paint lost territories" with commentary to appeal to nationalist sentiments but they are irrelevant to almost all outside observers i.e. Former Mexican territory Conquered by the U.S." covering almost the entire Southwest and Texas or German Atlases showing Lost German Territories seized by Poland in 1945."
Geographers cannot stomach a characterless place--this is tantamount to a placeless place. The process of getting to know a place means discovering the interconnections of the phenomena which do give it a different character than our place or origin but which are not immediately apparent because they are so strange. This is akin to learning a foreign language that at first is just gibberish until slowly (and painfully because there are no shortcuts) it becomes meaningful expressive and even eloquent or beautiful (to the connoisseur or linguist at least). Languages themselves never remain the same when transplanted to a new world--just listen to the differences in intonation and stress between British and American English or Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese or Spanish and Argentinian Spanish. Few if any state has such a clear historical character as Israel defined by the millennia long relationship of the territory with a people who regarded it as their homeland and established a long lasting state with a distinctive culture religion and language.
Geography is an important antidote to the infantile habit of thinking the world is a laboratory in which we can carry out all kinds of experiments or a huge rubbish heap where we can get rid of all our trash. As David Landes warned in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations Geography tells an unpleasant truth namely that nature like life is unfair; unequal in its favors; further that natures unfairness is not easily remedied. A civilization like ours with its drive to mastery does not like to be thwarted. It disapproves of discouraging words which geographic comparisons abound in.
As recently as 1989 The General Assembly (State Legislature) of Pennsylvania passed House Resolution No. 189 declaring a Geography Awareness Week" in the State. It would have been more fitting for the U.S. Congress to pass it but the results would probably have been equally fruitless. Unless there is drastic action Americans will continue to rank as among the most unaware peoples of their surroundings both cultural-historical and environmental-physical.
The Pennsylvania resolution included among its many citations that….