Quick! Name Togo's Capital

By Sam Allis

If you're in Senegal and want to get to Chad, which countries would you cross to get there?

Mmmm. Let me get back to you on that.

No such luck if you are one of the 23 seventh-grade students in David Smith's geography class at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Mass. That question is typical of the brainteasers he tosses out to his tribe throughout the school year in an effort to teach them what the world looks like. By June, the answer is as obvious as, say, the capital of Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou).

On the opening day of school in September, Smith, 46, gives his students blank grids and tells them to draw their versions of the globe. These are revealing documents. One student skipped Europe altogether. Another put Antarctica at the North Pole. A third had Asia due north of Europe, while a fourth placed England squarely in Africa. "My first map was a complete disgrace," admits Adrian Nivola. Recalls Tao Nguyen: "I drew a big blob."

Never mind. One in 7 Americans cannot find the U.S. on a blank world map, and 1 in 4 cannot locate the Pacific Ocean, according to a 1988-89 Gallup survey commissioned by the National Geographic Society. In the same poll, American students ages 18 to 24 came in dead last among ten countries tested in geography. Half did not know that the Panama Canal cuts sailing time between New York City and San Francisco.

Smith puts away his students' charming first efforts and goes to work, devoting two or three weeks to each continent or land mass. Africa, hands down the toughest nut, warrants four weeks. "It's got a lot of little countries and weird names," explains Sara Stonberg. There are no tricks to this process, which is the point. Students spend two hours in class each week and another couple of hours on homework, learning the old-fashioned way. They memorize names and shapes, and draw over and over the outlines of countries and land masses (the northern edge of the Soviet Union is particularly nettlesome) until they get them right. Creative use of mnemonics helps. "Beware of hot gorillas eating nitrates casually, pop" is code for the Central American countries of Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Smith leavens the work load with games like geography baseball, in which a home-run problem might be: name the 15 Soviet republics. Later in the year, it would become: name each of their capitals. Slowly, the contours of the world come into focus.

"They are learning how to learn," Smith explains. "They end up dealing comfortably with maps and the ability to decode information from maps, to use an atlas, read latitude and longitude." The class accomplishes this in an atmosphere of controlled chaos. Students throw questions at one another as they pore over their material. "Does Tasmania belong to Australia?" shouts one student. "Since Greenland belongs to Denmark, does that make Copenhagen its capital?" asks another of no one in particular.

Just before the end of the school year, Smith gives his students blank, 17- in. by 27-in. map boards and tells them to try again. They have about 14 hours of class time over several weeks to complete the job from memory. No tracing or reference material is allowed. The results are breathtaking. The class produces richly colored maps, complete with longitude and latitude and close to 150 countries accurately identified and located. Most are in proper scale. Many maps include capitals, mountains and rivers. Some are festooned with whimsical touches. Ethel Weld drew a school of fish, blowing bubbles, off Montevideo. Alice Gearhart fashioned the lost city of Atlantis in one part of her map and, inexplicably, the Grim Reaper in another.

"What is more important is not the map but the process," says Smith, who does not grade the final products. "The kids take something they're completely terrified of in September and in June draw the world and make it beautiful and enjoy the process. When they arrive here, I tell them they'll end up with 150 countries, and they tell me, 'No way.' As teachers, we face kids who have attention spans of 20 seconds. This takes nine months and goes against everything American society is pushing. This is rote memory, enriched by mnemonics and practice and the real use of knowledge -- the way people learn anything."

Word of Smith's success is spreading. In the past year, he has spoken in California, Kentucky, Missouri, Connecticut and Massachusetts to educators interested in his approach to the subject. Geography is making a comeback in this country after a long decline, according to National Geographic Society staff member Jane Tully. In Tennessee, for example, enrollment in high school geography classes is up more than 100% since 1987. "Geography simply got lost as a subject," she explains. "It got folded into social studies after World War II, and it lost its identity. This also meant that a whole generation of teachers didn't learn geography, and it stopped being taught."

By the end of the year, Smith's students feel confident, if not smug, about their grasp of the world. "I used to hear about countries on television and think they were over there somewhere. I hadn't heard of half of them," admits Leila Nesson. "Now I can figure out better what's going on in the world. I'll always know that Angola is in Africa and not just over there somewhere." Says Eleanor Pries, as she examines her final map: "We saw our originals and we just laughed."