Mapping to Minimize Inequality (An Elementary Social Studies Lesson)

This week, ThaiPost delivered three packages that made me happy.

The first was from a college friend who sent me a letter.

The second was from a Chinese friend who sent a box of Chinese candy, a red string bracelet with jade, and two pairs of red "lucky underwear" with glittery happiness characters on the elastic band right below my navel. These red objects are designed to keep me safe during my perilous 24th year on earth, my potentially lucky, potentially life-altering Monkey Year. After sharing the candy with my students and my American housemate, I ate the rest of it all that night. I've been washing the lucky underwear every other day in order to maximize the amount of time it contacts my body.

The third package was from my housemate's Missouri parents, who sent him chocolate chip cookies, an accurate map of the world, and teacher's wall tack--that blue rubber that's unavailable in Asia. I have gotten use of the tack and the map, and I got to eat one of the cookies. (So the package wasn't really sent to me, but David did put in the sticky tack requests for me).

Here's the map his parents sent him. It's called the Peter's Projection Map.

I bet this is different than the map you used in school. Can't place where the differences lie? Look at the massive stretch of Africa. Look at the puniness of Greenland. This is an accurate projection of the earth's surface.

Now look at the Mercator Projection.

This is the map you used in school. Doesn't it seem like a joke? Greenland has an area of .8 square miles. Africa's area is 11.6 square miles. But they're the same size on this map. That's because it's nearly 450 years old. Europe was then the center of world power. The new Peter's Projection maps the countries scientifically, not by colonial ego.

We can thank Gerardus Mercator for that old map. He was German. He lived in the 16th Century.


All of his maps should be burned (except the ones in history of science museums). Then we'd realize that Alaska is not twice as big as Mexico, Russia is not so scary, and the southern hemisphere is actually pretty big. We could just as easily use this map: