As students
read, hear, observe, and think more about the world around them,
they can add more detail and structure to their maps. As students
get older, their mental maps accumulate multiple layers of useful
information and this growth in complexity and utility can provide
them with a sense of satisfaction as more places and events in
the world can be placed into meaningful spatial contexts.
If geography
is to be useful in creating a framework for understanding the
world- past, present, and future- then coherent mental maps must
take shape and become increasingly refined as students progress
through their school years. Students should be encouraged to develop
and update their mental maps to ensure that they continue to have
essential knowledge of place location, place characteristics,
and other information that will assist them in personal decision-making
and in establishing a broad-based perception of Earth from a local
to a global perspective. In addition, they need to understand
that developing mental maps is a basic skill for everyone who
wants to engage in a lifetime of geographic understanding.
Standard 4: The Physical and Human Characteristics of Places.
People's lives
are grounded in particular places. We come from a place, we live
in a place, and we preserve and exhibit fierce pride over places.
Our sense of self is intimately entwined with that of place. Who
we are is often inseparable from where we are. Places are human
creations and the geographically informed person must understand
the genesis, evolution, and meaning of places.
Places are
parts of Earth's space, large or small, that have been endowed
with meaning by humans. They include continents, islands, countries,
regions, states, cities, neighborhoods, villages, rural areas,
and uninhabited areas. They usually have names and boundaries.
Each place possesses a distinctive set of tangible and intangible
characteristics that helps to distinguish it from other places.
Places are characterized by their physical and human properties.
Their physical characteristics include climate, landforms, soils,
hydrology, vegetation, and animal life. Their human characteristics
include language, religion, political systems, economic systems,
population distribution, and quality of life.
Places change
over time as both physical and human processes operate to modify
Earth's surface. Few places remain unchanged for long and these
changes have a wide range of consequences. As knowledge, ideologies,
values, resources, and technologies change, people make place-altering
decisions about how to use land, how to organize society, and
ways in which to relate (such as economically or politically)
to nearby and distant places. Out of these processes emerge new
places, with existing places being reorganized and expanded, other
places declining, and some places disappearing. Places change
in size and complexity and in economic, political, and cultural
importance as networks of relationships between places are altered
through population expansion, the rise and fall of empires, changes
in climate and other physical systems, and changes in transportation
and communication technologies. A place can be dramatically altered
by events both near and far.
Knowing how
and why places change enables people to understand the need for
knowledgeable and collaborative decision-making about where to
locate schools, factories, and other things and how to make wise
use of features of the physical environment such as soil, air,
water, and vegetation. Knowing the physical and human characteristics
of their own places influences how people think about who they
are, because their identity is inextricably bound up with their
place in life and the world. Personal identity, community identity,
and national identity are rooted in place and attachment to place.
Knowing about other places influences how people understand other
peoples, cultures, and regions of the world. Knowledge of places
at all scales, local to global, is incorporated into people's
mental maps of the world.
Students need
an understanding of why places are the way they are, because it
can enrich their own sense of identity with a particular place
and enable them to comprehend and appreciate both the similarities
and differences of places around their own community, state, country,
and planet.
Standard
10: The Characteristics, Distribution and Complexity of Earth's
Cultural Mosaics.
Culture is
a complex, multifaceted concept. It is a term used to cover the
social structure, languages, belief systems, institutions, technology,
art, foods, and traditions of particular groups of humans. The
term is used to define each group's way of life and its own view
of itself and of other groups, as well as to define the material
goods it creates and uses, the skills it has developed, and the
behaviors it transmits to each successive generation.
The human
world is composed of culture groups, each of which has its distinctive
way of life as reflected in the group's land-use practices, economic
activities, organization and layout of settlements, attitudes
toward the role of women in society, education system, and observance
of traditional customs and holidays. These ways of life result
in landscapes and regions with a distinctive appearance. Landscapes
often overlap, thus forming elaborate mosaics of peoples and places.
These cultural
mosaics can be approached from a variety of spatial scales. At
one scale, for example, Western Europe's inhabitants can be seen
as a single culture group; at another scale they consist of distinctive
national culture groups (e.g., the French and the Spanish); and
at yet another scale each national culture group can be subdivided
into smaller, regionally clustered culture groups (e.g., the Flemings
and Walloons in Belgium).
As Earth evolves
into an increasingly interdependent world in which different culture
groups come into contact more than ever before, it becomes more
important that people have an understanding of the nature, complexity,
and spatial distribution of cultural mosaics.
Given the
complexity of culture, it is often useful - especially when studying
the subject from a geographic point of view - to focus on the
languages, beliefs, institutions, and technologies that are characteristic
of a culture. The geographically informed person, therefore, is
an individual who has a thorough grasp of the nature and distribution
of culture groups.
Language both
represents and reflects many aspects of a culture. It stands as
an important symbol of culture. It is seen as a sign of the unity
of a particular culture group. It can be analyzed - in terms of
vocabulary and structure - for clues about the values and beliefs
of a culture group. Language is also a visible marker that provides
a way of tracing the history of a culture. The complex and often
tense relations between French-speaking and English-speaking people
in Quebec illustrate and reflect the importance of language to
culture groups and also the value of studying the geography of
language.
Beliefs include
religion, customs, values, attitudes, ideals, and world views.
A person's point of view on issues is influenced by cultural beliefs,
which in turn influence decisions about resources, land use, settlement
patterns, and a host of other geographically important concerns.
The complicated and often difficult relations of Hindus and Muslims
in India demonstrate how the spatial organization of a country
can be shaped by the geography of the region.
Institutions
shape the ways in which people organize the world around them;
for example, sets of laws, educational systems, political arrangements,
and the structure of the family shape a culture region. The Mormon
culture region of the western United States shows how institutions
are embodied in a distinctive place, demarcating it and influencing
practically every aspect of daily life.
Technology
includes the tools and skills a group of people use to satisfy
their needs and wants. Levels of technology range from the simple
tools used by hunters and gatherers to the most complex machines
and information systems used in modern industrial societies. Technologies
can be usefully understood as either hardware - the tools themselves
- or software - the skilled ways in which a society uses tools.
The Amish of south-central Pennsylvania have created a distinctive
landscape that is simultaneously an expression of technology,
institutions, beliefs, and language.
Whatever characteristic
of culture is considered, it is clear that the mosaics of Earth's
cultural landscapes are not static. Culture changes as a result
of a variety of human processes, migration and the spread (diffusion)
of new cultural traits - language, music, and technology - to
existing culture groups. The processes of cultural change accelerate
with improvements in transportation and communication. Each culture
in the world has borrowed attributes from other cultures whether
knowingly or not, willingly or not.
Students should
be exposed to a rich appreciation of the nature of culture so
they can understand the ways in which people choose to live in
different regions of the world. Such an understanding will enable
them to appreciate the role culture plays in the spatial organization
of modern society. Rivalry and tension between cultures contribute
much to world conflict. As members of a multicultural society
in a multicultural world, students must understand the diverse
spatial expressions of culture.
Standard 11: The Patterns and Networks of Economic Interdependence
on Earth's Surface.
Resources
are unevenly scattered across the surface of Earth, and no country
has all of the resources it needs to survive and grow. Thus each
country must trade with others, and Earth is a world of increasing
global economic interdependence. Accordingly, the geographically
informed person understands the spatial organization of economic,
transportation, and communication systems, which produce and exchange
the great variety of commodities - raw materials, manufactured
goods, capital, and services - which constitute the global economy.
The spatial
dimensions of economic activity and global interdependence are
visible everywhere. Trucks haul frozen vegetables to markets hundreds
of miles from growing areas and processing plants. Airplanes move
large numbers of business passengers or vacationers. Highways,
especially in developed countries, carry the cars of many commuters,
tourists, and other travelers. The labels on products sold in
American supermarkets typically identify the products as coming
from other U.S. states and from other countries.
The spatial
dimensions of economic activity are more and more complex. For
example, petroleum is shipped from Southwest Asia, Africa, and
Latin America to major energy-importing regions such as the United
States, Japan, and Western Europe. Raw materials and food from
tropical areas are exchanged for the processed or fabricated products
of the mid-latitude developed countries. Components for vehicles
and electronics equipment are made in Japan and the United States,
shipped to South Korea and Mexico for partial assembly, returned
to Japan and the United States for final assembly intro finished
products, then shipped all over the world.
Economic activities
depend upon capital, resources, power supplies, labor, information,
and land. The spatial patterns of industrial labor systems have
changed over time. In much of Western Europe, for example, small-scale
and spatially dispersed cottage industry was displaced by large-scale
and concentrated factory industry after 1760. This change caused
rural emigration, the growth of cities, and changes in gender
and age roles. The factory has now been replaced by the office
as the principal workplace in developed countries. In turn, telecommunications
are diminishing the need for a person's physical presence in an
office. Economic, social, and therefore spatial relationships
change continuously.
The world
economy has core areas where the availability of advanced technology
and investment capital are central to economic development. In
addition, it has semi-peripheries where lesser amounts of value
are added to industry or agriculture, and peripheries where resource
extraction or basic export agriculture are dominant. Local and
world economies intermesh to create networks, movement patterns,
transportation routes, market areas, and hinterlands.
In the developed
countries of the world's core areas, business leaders are concerned
with such issues as accessibility, connectivity, location, networks,
functional regions, and spatial efficiency - factors that play
an essential role in economic development and also reflect the
spatial and economic interdependence of places on Earth.
In developing
countries, such as Bangladesh and Guatemala, economic activities
tend to be at a more basic level, with a substantial proportion
of the population being engaged in the production of food and
raw materials. Nonetheless, systems of interdependence have developed
at the local, regional, and national levels. Subsistence farming
often exists side by side with commercial agriculture. In China,
for example, a government-regulated farming system provides for
structured production and tight economic links of the rural population
to nearby cities. In Latin America and Africa, rural people are
leaving the land and migrating to large cities, in part to search
for jobs and economic prosperity and in part as a response to
overpopulation in marginal agricultural regions. Another important
trend is industrialized countries continuing to export their labor-intensive
processing and fabrication to developing countries. The recipient
countries also profit from the arrangement financially but at
a social price. The arrangement can put great strains on centuries-old
societal structures in the recipient countries.
As world population
grows, as energy costs increase, as time becomes more valuable,
and as resources become depleted or discovered, societies need
economic systems that are more efficient and responsive. It is
particularly important, therefore, for students to understand
world patterns and networks of economic interdependence and to
realize that traditional patterns of trade, human migration, and
cultural and political alliances are being altered as a consequence
of global interdependence.
Standard
12: The Processes, Patterns, and Functions of Human Settlement
.
People seldom
live in isolation. Most reside in settlements, which vary greatly
in size, composition, location, arrangement, and function. These
organized groupings of human habitation are the focus of most
aspects of human life: economic activities, transportation systems,
communications media, political and administrative systems, culture
and entertainment. Therefore, to be geographically competent -
to appreciate the significance of geography's central theme that
Earth is the home of people- a person must understand settlement
processes and functions and the patterns of settlements across
Earth's surface.
Settlements exercise a powerful influence in shaping the world's
different cultural, political, and economic systems. They reflect
the values of cultural groups and the kinds of political structure
and economic activity engaged in by a society. Accordingly, the
patterns of settlement across Earth's surface differ markedly
from region to region and place to place. Of great importance
to human existence, therefore, are the spatial relationships between
settlements of different sizes: their spacing, their arrangement,
their functional differences, and their economic specialties.
These spatial relationships are shaped by trade and the movements
of raw materials, finished products, people, and ideas.
Cities, the
largest and densest human settlements, are the nodes of human
society. Almost half of the world's people now live in cities,
and the proportion is even higher in the developed regions of
the world. In the United States, more than three-quarters of the
people live in urban areas. More than two-thirds of the people
of Europe, Russia, Japan, and Australia live in such areas.
Cities throughout
the world are growing rapidly, but none so rapidly as those in
developing regions. For example, the ten largest cities in the
world in the year 2000 will include such Latin American cities
as Sao Paulo and Mexico City. In some regions of the world there
are concentrations of interconnected cities and urban areas, which
are known as megalopoli. In Japan, the three adjacent and continuous
cities of Tokyo-Kawasaki-Yokohama make up such a megalopolis.
In Germany there is another, consisting of the Rhine River Valley
and the cities of Essen, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, and Wuppertal.
The corridor from Boston to Washington, D.C., is also a megalopolis
(sometimes called Megalopolis because it was the first one to
be designated).
Cities are
not the same all over the world. North American cities, for example,
differ from European cities in shape and size, density of population,
transportation networks, and the patterns in which people live
and work within the city. The same contrast is true of cities
in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. For example, in North American
cities wealthy people tend to live in the outskirts or suburban
areas, whereas lower income residents tend to live in inner-city
areas. In Latin America the spatial pattern is reversed: wealthy
people live close to the city centers and poor people live in
slums or barrios found at the edges of urban areas.
In North America,
Europe, and Japan urban areas are linked to one another by well-integrated,
efficient, and reliable transportation and communications systems.
In these regions, even the smallest villages are linked in a web
of trade, transportation, and communication networks. In contrast,
in developing regions such as Latin America and Southeast Asia,
a single primate city often dominates the life of the country.
A primate city such as Buenos Aires or Manila is preeminent in
its influence on the culture, politics, and economic activities
of its country. Nevertheless, in terms of transportation and communications
links it may be better connected to the outside world than it
is to other regions of the country it serves.
Settlements
and the patterns they etch on Earth's surface provide not only
data on current economic and social aspects of human existence
but also a historical record. Today's settlement patterns, evident
on a map, provide information about past settlement patterns and
processes, and the boundaries of counties and other political
entities indicate how people organized the land as they settled
it. In all such cases, the surviving evidence of past settlements
can and should be amplified by the students' use of research materials
to develop a fuller understanding of how settlements relate to
their physical setting over time. It is valuable, for example,
to know about life in a German medieval town and the town's relationship
to the surrounding countryside; life in a typical North Dakota
settlement along a railroad line in the 1890s; and life in the
walled city of Xian and the city's importance in north China in
the second century B.C.
Students must
develop an understanding of the fundamental processes, patterns,
and functions of human settlement across Earth's surface, and
thereby come to appreciate the spatially ordered ways in which
Earth has become the home of people. They need to acquire a working
knowledge of such topics as: the nature and functions of cities,
the processes that cause cities to grow and decline, how cities
are related to their market areas or hinterlands; the patterns
of land use and value, population density, housing type, ethnicity,
socioeconomic status, and age distribution in urban areas; the
patterns of change, growth, and decline within urban areas; the
process of suburbanization; and how new types of urban nodes develop.
Geographers ask these questions to make sense of the distribution
and concentration of human populations.
Standard
16: The Changes that Occur in the Meaning, Use, Distribution,
and Importance of Resources.
A resource
is any physical material that constitutes part of Earth and which
people need and value. There are three basic resources - land,
water, and air - that are essential to human survival. However,
any other natural material also becomes a resource if and when
it becomes available to humans. The geographically informed person
must develop an understanding of this concept and of the changes
in the spatial distribution, quantity, and quality of resources
on Earth's surface.
Those changes
occur because a resource is a cultural concept, with the value
attached to any given resource varying from culture to culture
and period to period. Value can be expressed in economic or monetary
terms, in legal terms (as in the Clean Air Act), in terms of risk
assessment, or in terms of ethics (the responsibility to preserve
our National Parks for future generations). The value of a resource
depends on human needs and the technology available for its extraction
and use. Rock oil seeping from rocks in northwestern Pennsylvania
was of only minor value as a medicine until a technology was developed
in the mid-nineteenth century that enabled it to be refined into
a lamp illuminant. Some resources that were once valuable are
no longer important. For example, it was the availability of pine
tar and tall timber - strategic materials valued by the English
navy - that in the seventeenth century helped spur settlement
in northern New England, but that region now uses its vegetative
cover (and natural beauty) as a different type of resource - for
recreation and tourism. Resources, therefore, are the result of
people seeing a need and perceiving an opportunity to meet that
need.
The quantity
and quality of a resource is determined by whether it is a renewable,
nonrenewable, or a flow resource. Renewable resources, such as
plants and animals, can replenish themselves after they have been
used if their physical environment has not been destroyed. If
trees are harvested carefully, a new forest will grow to replace
the one that was cut. If animals eat grass in a pasture to a certain
level, grass will grow again and provide food for animals in the
future, as long as the carrying capacity of the land if not exceeded
by the pressure of too many animals. Nonrenewable resources, such
as minerals and fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), can
be extracted and used only once. Flow resources, such as water,
wind, and sunlight, are neither renewable nor nonrenewable because
they must be used as, when, and where they occur. The energy in
a river can be used to generate electricity, which can be transmitted
over great distances. However, that energy must be captured by
turbines as the water flows past or it will be lost.
The location
of resources influences the distribution of people and their activities
on the Earth. People live where they can earn a living. Human
migration and settlement are linked to the availability of resources,
ranging from fertile soils and supplies of freshwater to deposits
of metals or pools of natural gas. The patterns of population
distribution that result from the relationship between resources
and employment change as needs and technologies change. In Colorado,
for example, abandoned mining towns reflect the exhaustion of
nonrenewable resources (silver and lead deposits), whereas ski
resorts reflect the exploitation of renewable resources (snow
and scenery).
Technology
changes the ways in which humans appraise resources, and it may
modify economic systems and population distributions. Changes
in technology bring into play new ranges of resources from Earth's
stock. Since the industrial revolution, for example, technology
has shifted from waterpower to coal-generated steam to petroleum-powered
engines, and different resources and their source locations have
become important. The population of the Ruhr Valley in Germany,
for example, grew rapidly in response to the new importance of
coal and minerals in industrial ventures. Similarly, each innovation
in the manufacture of steel brought a new resource to prominence
in the United States, and resulted in locational shifts in steel
production and population growth.
Demands for
resources vary spatially. More resources are used by economically
developed countries than by developing countries. For example,
the United States uses petroleum at a rate that is five times
the world average. As countries develop economically, their demand
for resources increases faster than their population grows. The
wealth that accompanies economic development enables people to
consume more. The consumption of a resource does not necessarily
occur where the resource is produced or where the largest reserves
of the resource are located. Most of the petroleum produced in
Southwest Asia, for example, is consumed in the United States,
Europe, and Japan.
Sometimes, users of resources feel insecure when they have to
depend on other places to supply them with materials that are
so important to their economy and standard of living. This feeling
of insecurity can become especially strong if two interdependent
countries do not have good political relations, share the same
values, or understand each other. In some situations, conflict
over resources breaks out into warfare. One factor in Japan's
involvement in World War II, for example, was that Japan lacked
petroleum resources of its own and coveted oil fields elsewhere
in Asia, especially after the United States threatened to cut
off its petroleum exports to Japan.
Conflicts
over resources are likely to increase as demand increases. Globally,
the increase in demand tends to keep pace with the increase in
population. More people on Earth means more need for fertilizers,
building materials, food, energy, and everything else produced
from resources. Accordingly, if the people of the world are to
coexist, Earth's resources must be managed to guarantee adequate
supplies for everyone. That means reserves of renewable resources
need to be sustained at a productive level, new reserves of nonrenewable
resources need to be found and exploited, new applications for
flow resources need to be developed, and, wherever possible, cost-effective
substitutes - especially for nonrenewable resources - need to
be developed.
It is essential
that students have a solid grasp of the different kinds of resources
of the ways in which humans value and use (and compete over) resources,
and of the distribution of resources across Earth's surface.
The above
material is from Geograpy for Life: The National Geography Standards,
1994. The Geography Education Standards Project.
© 1994 National Geographic Societly, Wahington, D.C.
Reprinted with the permission of the National Goeographic Society.
