Maps

Iraq Provinces

One of the favorite points education bashers like to make is that some variation of "58% of people can't locate Iraq on a map". The percentage, the group being analyzed and the location all vary. What they do not mention is that a large percentage of people cannot read a map at all. It took me a long time to realize this. Being as I have no trouble reading maps, I thought everyone else could do it too.

At lunch Thursday our gang was talking about this and Marc had a couple of things to say. He has recently returned from three years in the Caribbean. While he was there he did not meet a single person from that region who could read a map. At the beginning when he wanted to find out how to get somewhere, he would pull out a map and show it to someone and ask them to show him where it was on the map. They would use their finger to look at the map and they would wander all over without regard to any of the visual cues the map presented. Eventually he figured out they were looking for the name of the place. If they happened to find the name, they were golden. If they didn't, the map was no help. He tried using maps for awhile, but as he never found anyone who had any apparent ability to read one, he gave up and resigned himself to settling for the verbal description that they gave him.

As I own a bunch of maps and I enjoy studying maps, I find this very peculiar. I just ran a quick search on Google, and I found a couple of items that are sort of related. One was an article in an educational journal that I could buy for $9. The other was a short blurb about a research report (dead link) that linked map reading ability to gender and sexual orientation.

What I am not seeing here is any kind of wide reaching study of map reading. Is it something that can be taught, like reading (text)? Or is it an innate ability, that people simply pick up, like learning to walk or speak? Or maybe it's a cultural thing. Perhaps some cultures just never used maps.

And here is a comment that I think is just a little peculiar: "Here is a map for those who lack the ability to read:" (dead link). I was always under the impression that a map was a much superior way of explaining something involving land. Perhaps it was just a slip of the keyboard.

Update September 2016 replaced missing picture, labeled dead links.