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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."