As a result of reduced formal instruction and reduced direct experience in the natural environment, students suffer from a deficiency in geographic literacy. Informal learning environments, such as a model railroad exhibit at a history museum, can be exploited to introduce key geographic concepts (e.g., scalar compression, landscape…

Discusses geography's rather low status and relatively poor public image in the United States and some of the consequences. Among the world's educated industrial nations, the United States ranks among the least literate in a geographical sense. (RM)