New world map12/11/2023 This vision of the world harbors its own fair share of inaccuracies, but generally it comes closer to depicting the continents as they are. "Once students feel like the school isn't being truthful, there's a tendency to shut down and reject information," Frederick-Clarke tells WBUR.Įnter Peters' projection - which is also known as the Gall-Peters projection, since it's virtually identical to a projection put forward by the Scottish cartographer James Gall in the 19th century. How do we talk about other viewpoints? This is a great jump off point.Ĭolin Rose, assistant superintendent of opportunity and achievement gaps for Boston Public Schools We've had a very fixed view that is very Eurocentric. It's about a paradigm shift in our district. This is about maps, but it isn't about maps. And the central point on the globe for him was, of course, Europe. For Gerardus Mercator - the Flemish cartographer who in 1569 came up with the map still most commonly used today - the central goal was to support navigation along colonial trade routes. The issue rests partly in the problem of how to transpose the 3-D shape of Earth onto a two-dimensional sheet of paper. It only seems right that we would present them with an accurate view of themselves." "Maps that they are presented with generally classify the places that they're from as small and insignificant. "Eighty-six percent of our students are students of color," Hayden Frederick-Clarke, director of cultural proficiency for BPS, tells member station WBUR. "This is the start of a three-year effort to decolonize the curriculum in our public schools," said Colin Rose, assistant superintendent of opportunity and achievement gaps for Boston Public Schools, tells The Guardian. Introduced at a conference in Germany in 1974, historian Arno Peters' map aims to fix the Mercator's inaccuracies, which vastly exaggerate the size of land masses approaching the north and south poles - and in doing so, help prop up a decidedly eurocentric worldview. Goats and Soda VIDEO: Time-Lapse Google Maps Show How The World Is Changingīy contrast, the map known as the Peters projection, which city authorities are now meting out to many of the city's classrooms, is a relative fledgling. It's that map that hangs in most classrooms throughout the U.S., including those in Boston. When many people picture a map of the world, what they're probably thinking of is a Mercator projection, a representation that despite its apparent distortions has been around more than 400 years. Students throughout Boston are getting a radically different view of the world, one laminated 24-by-36-inch sheet of paper at a time.īeginning last Thursday, Boston Public Schools administrators have been sending social studies teachers in the second, seventh and 11th grades new maps for their classrooms - depictions that more accurately portray the sizes of Earth's continents. While things get squishy in places, most experts agree that this projection gives a much more accurate depiction of the world than the commonly used Mercator projection. The Peters - or, Gall-Peters - projection, an attempt to better reflect the position of the equator and the size of the continents.
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