Missing the Magic Carpet

📖 The Scoop

This booklet draws on the findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) geography survey of 1988 and shapes recommendations for practices that will make teachers more effective in stimulating student excitement about this increasingly important subject. The assessment surveyed more than 3,000 high school seniors in approximately 300 public and private schools. Questions asked included: (1) Why study geography?; (2) If geography is so important, why was it dropped from the school curriculum?; (3) What geographic knowledge and skills should every student possess?; and (4) Does it really matter if young citizens do not know geography? Suggestions are made to parents, teachers, and administrators about specific actions they can take to improve geography learning in U.S. schools. The document also provides some suggestions for statewide, schoolwide, familial, and individual responses to the alarm raised by the NAEP and other surveys chronicling geographic ignorance. A 9-item reference list is provided. (KM)

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