GEOGRAPHY STANDARD 2

The geographically informed person must mentally organize spatial in­formation about people, places, and environments and must be able to call upon and use this information in appropriate contexts. Knowing the locations and characteristics of people, places, and environments is a necessary precursor to—and outcome of—geographic learning and thinking. An effective way of doing this is to develop and use what is called a mental map: an individual’s internalized representation of as­pects of Earth’s surface. These maps in the mind are what a person knows about the locations and charac­teristics of places at a variety of scales, from the local (the layout of a person’s bedroom) to the global (the distribution of oceans and continents across Earth). Mental maps are a mix of objective knowledge and subjective perceptions: precise knowledge about the location of geographic features as well as impressions of places, rough estimates of size and location, and a general sense of the connections between places.

Therefore, Standard 2 contains these themes: Developing Mental Maps, Using Mental Maps, and Individual Perceptions Shape Mental Maps.

Mental maps provide people with essential means of making sense of the world and of storing and recalling information about the patterns of Earth’s physical and human features. These maps represent ever-changing summaries of spatial knowledge and are indicators of how well people know the spatial characteristics of places. We develop and refine our mental maps through learning from teachers and the media and through personal experience, moving from simple to more complex levels of completeness and accuracy, continuing to add layers of information so that our mental maps reflect a growing understand­ing of a changing world. As people read, hear, observe, and think more about the world around them, they add more detail and structure to their mental maps and accumulate layers of information that can be used in problem solving and decision making. Students must understand the role that perception plays in the creation and development of their understandings of the world.

Students must build their mental maps to develop detailed understandings of peoples, places, and en­vironments. By understanding these themes, students can build and apply the mental maps that are the foundations for learning geography and other subjects.