Maps and Mapmaking

Objectives

Capital High School is located in the South of Santa Fe among new development around the town's small airport. Santa Fe High School serves the more affluent part of Santa Fe whereas Capital High tends to serve a poorer, predominantly immigrant population.

I teach United States history and geography, government and economics to 125 Capital High School juniors and seniors living on the south side of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Recent immigrants from Mexico comprise approximately 40% of my students, another 40% of the students self-identify as "Hispanics," seeing themselves as the directed descendants of Spanish ancestors (as distinct from Mexican nationals). The remaining 20% are white, black and Asian.

Currently, we use the textbook called Magruder's American Government (2005). While this text offers a number of visual aids, it is, in the final analysis, a textbook. Students are intimidated by textbooks and reject them out-of-hand.

This seminar will bring excitement into my classroom without abandoning New Mexico's mandatory benchmarks in history, geography and economics. Maps will assist me in teaching critical thinking skills; mastery of geographic tools; understanding of patterns of social change; and appreciation for the interdependent nature of economies.

I hope that this curriculum will not only be relevant and inspiring to other social study teachers but also to those who teach History, English, Math and Geography. Maps have the potential to reach even those students whose English is poor and who learn through art, drawing, and dreaming. Like the literature of the dispossessed, maps speak graphically to those who have personally experienced poverty and discrimination.

I am a first year teacher, with 25 years of experience in programs aimed at alleviating poverty and addressing public health and educational issues particularly in Africa. I am committed to ensuring that students in my classroom can: a) define poverty and know how to measure it using statistics and maps, b) orient themselves and the places they study in the world, and c) understand their own personal responsibility in advancing within the economic system in which they find themselves. I believe that contemporary high school students should be taught to see the intrinsic advantages of living in the United States: education, clean water, housing, transport and the possibility of work. These possibilities stand in stark contrast to the plight of those two billion persons in the world who are faced with disease, illiteracy, discrimination, and death.

An emphasis for my work in U.S. history, government and economics has been on the interrelationship between land acquisition, migration, cultural ancestry and economics. Students grasp how these elements have created today's border conflicts and defined certain populations as poor. I frequently use U.S. Census data and maps to enhance understanding of poverty in the world and especially in Santa Fe, New Mexico—where the overall per capita income is quite high, yet many of my students live in poverty (60% Title I).

Last year I taught a spring semester on poverty to 50 high school seniors. In their yearend evaluations 99% of students stated that reading The End of Poverty was interesting. They enjoyed our many guest speakers and presenters. We heard from a former governor of Pojoaque about growing up in the Southwest and being discriminated against. We appreciated a slide show and talk on Kenya from a thirty year-old student. He provided excellent first-hand information on his struggle to leave poverty behind using education and building his own small business making basketball backboards and selling them through his church. A Santa Fe lawyer spoke of litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court regarding water right currently being disputed between states.

My Government and Economics class studied the minimum wage in Santa Fe. Santa Fe's Minimum wage is quite high $9.50 per hour in 2007 ($10.50 in 2008). The New Mexico and US minimum wage is set at $5.85 per hour.⁶ On the other hand, a significant proportion of my students come from the state of Chihuahua and the border region where the average income working in a factory (maquilladora) is about $4.14 per day. Approximately 80% of my students work at jobs in Santa Fe from 4-10 pm and on the weekends. They contribute significantly to their own family economy and some of them are living on their own. The purpose of this class was to learn the conditions that Santa Fe's City Council considers when making a decision to raise the minimum wage. Our focus was on factors that employers and workers consider when advocating a raise in minimum wage.

My Curriculum Unit on Santa Fe and the World: Maps and Mapmaking of People, Places and Poverty has these objectives.

Students will learn and do basic mapping: directionality, spatial representation, legends, symbols, orientation, measurements of distance etc.

Students will make their own maps of Santa Fe; explore alternative symbols for economics (what development exists and what does not)

Students will critically analyze and evaluate maps of the role cotton played in US history before the Civil War. They will understand the South's underdevelopment due to slavery, malaria and discrimination. They will see the North and Europe's reliance on factors of production such as land, labor and capital.

Students will see trends of development in the US — who are the 'haves' and 'have-nots' — Why certain regions remain underdeveloped (the rural South, the Four Corners and Appalachia) (Santa Fe and its pockets of affluence and poverty)

Students will see how maps contain data that can be aggregated from the county, state and other country levels.

Students will be able to measure poverty in a variety of city, state and world contexts.

Students will see "How Maps Lie" when data is left out or aggregated. Students will evaluate the mapmaker's point of view.

Students will study economic underdevelopment in the US, Bolivia, Kenya, China, India, Poland and Russia. They will understand political, social and economic factors to distinguish between those that have stifled growth and those that have and fostered growth.

By looking at concrete steps that have been taken to end poverty in Millennium Development Villages, students will engage the Internet to explore steps such as micro-credit, primary school education and better education to lift individual villagers out of poverty.