“She” is my daughter’s 6th grade science teacher, who I’ve mentioned before.
Let’s recap:
- She thinks that 6th grade science is a waste of time (all it does is prepare you for 7th grade science).
- She collects rocks shaped like hearts, because every time she finds a new one her luck goes way up (“pretty bad for a science teacher,” according to my daughter).
And, now, I’ve heard that she “believes in 2012.”
One of my kids wanted very badly to go to public school, just to see what it was like. So, for 8th grade, she attended one term at the local jr high. (That was all she could handle). Her geography teacher announced, on the first day of class, that on ALL maps, the USA is misrepresented at being larger than it really is, because all maps are printed in the USA. And this was her best teacher of the lot….
Wow. The *geography* teacher? Now, that’s bad.
I wish my daughter would develop second thoughts, as yours did. For me, every day is a search for silver linings, which are becoming increasingly difficult to find. :(
I don’t remember where, but I’ve heard the map thing before. I think it was some homeschoolers that trotted that one out….
I feel your pain, Girl has a fundie Chemistry teacher.
I heard once that Africa is printed smaller on some maps than it really is. Never heard that America is larger. LOL
My daughter asked me about why some people believe the world will come to an end in 2012. She had a bit of a hard time understanding how people can fall for these myths.
Well, if she believes 2012, then what’s the point of teaching the kids anything at all. They’ll be dead in 2 years anyway. She should spend the time reading them xian fairy tales to prepare them for the end.
Here it is… I knew I remembered something like this.
http://everything2.com/title/Peters+Projection
No map of the world is perfect, since the surface of a sphere cannot be projected onto a flat surface without some degree of distortion. For hundreds of years, the most popular projection of the planet’s surface onto a flat map was the Mercator projection, even though it seriously distorted the relative sizes of many countries. For example, Mercator maps show Greenland to be roughly the same size as Africa, when, in reality, Africa is actually fourteen times larger. Africa also looks considerably smaller than Russia on a Mercator map, even though Africa is actually 33% larger. However, generations of navigators weren’t bothered much by Mercator’s misrepresentations, since they cared most about longitude and latitude, which the Mercator projection handles rather well.
In 1974, a historian and cartographer named Dr. Arno Peters introduced a map which projected the world onto an equal and consistent grid, which made it possible to accurately compare the sizes of countries and visualize the true distance between any two points on the earth. For those who grew up with the Mercator map, the Peters projection map appears to be stretched vertically, and Africa suddenly looks huge.
A variety of social and religious groups fervently argue that since the Mercator map makes many countries appear smaller than they really are, people (especially children) reading them may infer that certain countries are innately more important than others. This rhetoric has often escalated to the point where the Mercator map is openly described as being “racist”. Many of these groups are working to address this perceived problem by lobbying schools around the world to adopt the Peters projection map in classrooms. This seemingly noble movement is not without controversy, however, since educators, well-aware of the Mercator map’s deficiencies, were already adopting maps based on other projections, some of which are even more accurate than Peters’s. Others argue that Arno Peters wasn’t even the first person to devise such a projection, since James Gall had come up with the same idea in 1855 (which is why some refer to it as the Gall-Peters projection).
Good find, Ute. Maybe the geography teacher had the Mercator map in mind… though, of course, “ALL” maps are neither Mercator maps nor “made in the USA.”
I think I remember the Mercator map from school. It’s considered “euro-centric” because the countries in the northern hemisphere appear bigger, right? As I recall, there are lots of ways to map the globe and they all have distortions of some kind… but, I’m a lousy 3-dimensional thinker, so I didn’t retain much of what I learned. :)
There was a great episode of “West Wing” about the map controversy . . .
Thanks, JJ. Excellent addition. :)
And, I love the conceding head nod at “we unconsciously equate size with importance and power” (begininning at 3:00). :)
I love the conceding head nod at “we unconsciously equate size with importance and power”
I know right??
It goes with the old joke about why girls aren’t so good with math? Because men have been telling them all their lives that this [hold up thumb and forefinger about four inches apart] is six inches . . .
LMAO, JJ!!! You just made my evening.
:D
Hi Ute, congrats on the new FBB job helping us Thinking Parents find thinking conversations!