Maps: Should Accuracy be Assumed?

Mercator Projection Map created in 1569

Do you look at this map and think....That's not accurate?
Most people don't...we accept what we see!
(The American Cartographic Association)

Flat maps do not offer an accurate picture of the world...globes allow for a more realistic perspective of our world.  

To teach children to be global, civic minded citizens we must teach students to look at maps critically without assumption!

Information and recommendations on this post are based on the following article:
McCall, A.L. (2011). Promoting critical thinking and inquiry through maps elementary classrooms. The Social Studies.102. 132-138. 
This article points out biases in published maps and recommends ways to promote critically thinking and examination of maps for young elementary students. 

There are biases in maps

• World maps have much distortion because of the display of a large area on a flat surface
• Most maps place North at the top, but polar direction has nothing to do with what is at the top
• Some projections place Europe and the Americas in the center and split Asia into 2 landmasses, this reflects a European or Western bias
• Geographic relationships such as shape, size and direction are often distorted-based on perspective of the cartographer
• The Mercator map exaggerates the sizes of European colonizing nations while depicting the sizes of colonized nations as smaller than they actually are.

    What can teachers do?

• Have young children make maps before reading maps
• Allows students to learn about scale, perspective, symbols and map keeps in meaningful ways before exposure to published maps.

• Engage students in questioning maps
• help students to create more representative mental maps of various land masses.

• Encourage more than one right answer
• allow students to discuss view points.

• Integrate geography into all areas of the curriculum
• everything happens in a place, use a map!
• use in math to measure distances on maps and use map scales.

• Compare three different world maps
• The Mercator Projection (conformal map)
• The Peters Projection (equal area map)
• The World Turned Upside Down (upside-down map)
• All maps are available from ODT which provides innovative maps, products and resources.

Social studies teaching encourages students to look at materially critically, to question value and purpose; these same strategies need to be used when looking at maps!

The Theme from the National Council for the Social Studies of people, places and environments requires students to use high level of thinking skills, these standards should motivate teachers to help students question the accuracy of the maps they create and use.

"Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers."

                                          -Josef Albers