There’s a big debate about what maps should be shown in school. The legislature has passed a bill stating that teachers should no longer display Mercator projection maps, but instead use other projections like Robinson and Gall-Peters.
Social studies teacher Kristy McGuire explained the difference between Mercator and different kinds of maps.
“There are many types of map projections, each serving different purposes. While I didn’t pay much attention to this topic initially, the Mercator projection stands out for its portrayal of the world, often much larger for the size of certain regions. This projection was commonly used during my high school years and still holds significance, especially in my AP Human Geography class discussions on map projections. However, it’s not ideal for classroom displays, as it can mislead students into thinking Greenland is as large as Africa, which is inaccurate. I prefer the use of maps that accurately represent areas like the Robinson.”
Lula McCaskill, a social studies teacher, explains why this would be deemed to not be used in education.
The autograph map is a display of the world that is more accurate to land sizes.
The Mercator is disproportionate in size, making Europe and Greenland much larger than they are.
The Gall Peter map is great for direction, although it is very elongated.
“Generally, they have been trying to not use the Mercator map for quite some time, and even though it’s not a law not to use it, we generally don’t because it distorts the land masses. So it will cause some places to look much larger than they are, and other places to look smaller. It gives the northern hemisphere more importance than the southern hemisphere. If you look at Greenland it’s larger than Africa on a Mercator map, when it’s not.”
These types of distortions can easily confuse an adolescent’s mind. According to McGuire, it can negatively affect a student, “If you are a young child and you don’t have an understanding of the world, and even if a teacher explains it in class, they can’t understand how it distorts the size or why it distorts the land size closer to the poles, so a student could easily look at a Mercator projection and think that Europe is much bigger than it is.”
Teachers already have an understanding not to use these maps, McCaskill said, “The Gall-Peters map also has distortion but it’s elongated, it’s odd to the eye, but it’s pretty accurate. All map projections have distortions. I’m unfamiliar with autograph projection maps, but definitely, people don’t like change. I think a lot of legislators may not know that we don’t use the Mercator projection, but we use it just to show the differences. Generally, most classrooms have a Robinson map. I use it for the most part.”
