As a Driving Instructor, I come across lots of 17/18 year olds and am often surprised at their lack of Geographical knowledge.
Often they will have no idea as to where places are in the country.
I believe with sat navs/internet we are losing the ability or desire to look at maps.
As a youngster I spent literally hours looking at maps and taking in the information. I found maps fascinating.
Combine that with my interest in railways and football (both of which led me to travel extensively around the country), I built up (as did many others of my era) a thorough knowledge of the geography of the British Isles.
What do others think ?
Same as every other skill - the more the human race relies on technology to tell them what to do, the less informed we become. What's that old song? "In the year 2525. . . " ::)
Paul
Quote from: Sprintex on November 25, 2014, 09:32:52 PM
Same as every other skill - the more the human race relies on technology to tell them what to do, the less informed we become. What's that old song? "In the year 2525. . . " ::)
Paul
Zaeger & Evans I believe (excuse the spelling !!).
Technology reduces our need to memorise things too much , in my opinion.
Instead of keeping important telephone numbers in our heads we rely on 'Contacts' in the mobile. Fat lot of good when your mobile packs up ::)
Kids can't spell properly and tend to walk under the wheels of traffic as they don't look what they're doing. If you removed the mobile from them I reckon they'd just curl up and die.
Oh heck - you've started me off now :veryangry: :veryangry: :veryangry:
Well yer going to really blow a gasket now, Mick... guess wot? I've got me head down in a public place replying to this on me phone!!! :P
Oh, and sorry about me speln spelling :D
Quote from: port perran on November 25, 2014, 09:23:26 PM
As a Driving Instructor, I come across lots of 17/18 year olds and am often surprised at their lack of Geographical knowledge.
Often they will have no idea as to where places are in the country.
I believe with sat navs/internet we are losing the ability or desire to look at maps.
As a youngster I spent literally hours looking at maps and taking in the information. I found maps fascinating.
Combine that with my interest in railways and football (both of which led me to travel extensively around the country), I built up (as did many others of my era) a thorough knowledge of the geography of the British Isles.
Some 25 odd years ago (in that far and distant era where a telephone was still something attached to a wall or at best a car) my geography class (in a school in the Midlands) went on a one-week field trip to the Lake District. I remember being surprised at the complete and utter lack of geographical awareness amongsts my classmates, many of whom probably couldn't have navigated their way out of a paper bag with a map and a compass. I don't think much has really changed, except that mobile devices have brought delusionary navigational confidence to people who really really shouldn't be walking up that nice little hill with sheep on it.
The one thing that really honed my geographical knowledge was working as a booking clerk for BR back in the days when we had a proper railway. Even then many people had no idea of where places were.
Back in prehistory at a place I visited this year (Spur-of-the-moment Bealman thread), I actually studied geography at Durham University. We went on many field trips, and I still have a heap of 1" OS maps published in 1970 to this day.
They are, of course, historical documents in themselves now, and are fascinating to look at. What many people possibly don't realise is that those maps were extremely useful geographical tools.
I spent many hours tracing out the Tyne, Wear and Tees rivers and their tributaries to perform complex drainage analysis. By placing a ruler across contour lines, you could construct valley cross-sections and profiles. The amount of information contained in those maps is huge!
I later turned my focus of attention to geology when I arrived in Australia, getting a degree in geophysics here at my local university. However, I still value the skills I learned back then, and those OS maps are treasured possessions to this day.
For a variety of reasons I grew up with maps - moved several times, a couple of long trips across Europe by car, and especially orienteering, which has left me with a fairly developed sense of where places are and how they fit together, and I love exploring new places *without* referring to a map. I never get lost (although there are sometimes occasions when I'm unable to reconcile my immediate surroundings in the broader geographic context :P ).
Quote from: Bealman on November 25, 2014, 11:40:18 PMThey are, of course, historical documents in themselves now, and are fascinating to look at. What many people possibly don't realise is that those maps were extremely useful geographical tools.
Wonderful things, OS maps, and I have yet to come across anything comparable in other countries.
I used OS maps extensively when I used to do SHF radio link planning. One of my more interesting maps is the Geological Survey Maps (North & South) covering under the skin of the British Isles.
Yeah, got some of them, too! And of course the older 6" maps are invaluable to anyone modelling a real location at a particular time in history.
Aren't geological maps full of pretty colours, though. :D
If when driving with my first wife we got "Lost" she would have a melt down, now with Pam if we miss a turning we laugh and continue on as in the UK you are never more than 20 miles or so from a helpful sign post the result of this we have quite a good knowledge the country south of the Wash who needs a Sat Nag
A classic was when I was driving from Auckland to Rotorua in New Zealand a couple of years ago and the sat nav was giving directions in a female voice, Mrs B said, "she doesn't sit and read all that into it, does she."
I almost ran off the road. :uneasy:
The worse I have done, was years ago when driving some friends back to Tamworth from Milton Keynes on the A5 on a foggy night and I took a wrong turning at a roundabout just south of the Keynes and ended up going via Buckingham.
Was not pleased! :veryangry: :censored:
Quote from: Bealman on November 26, 2014, 01:40:06 AM
A classic was when I was driving from Auckland to Rotorua in New Zealand a couple of years ago and the sat nav was giving directions in a female voice, Mrs B said, "she doesn't sit and read all that into it, does she."
I almost ran off the road. :uneasy:
But she does. Doesn't she? :D
The responses do not surprise me (sadly), and the trend towards 'geographical ignorance' is international.
The process has been going on for several decades and is linked to the fact that as the world is (supposedly) a 'global village' everyone knows where everyone else is and has no need to learn about the 'minor' details such as actual location, much less geography.
This has been a concern of geographers for years, but is not changing, and, with the increase in GPS's is actually getting worse!! This is because, with a machine to navigate, the need to actually 'know' where you are is reduced even further. When you associate that with a firmly-held belief that the 'machine' is infalliable (even when it is shown to be anything but), then the result is almost a foregone conclusion.
And with satellite images readily available, what more is required?
Not sure if this answers the question, but hope that it may at least go some way to doing so...
Quote from: GeeBee on November 26, 2014, 01:18:04 AM
If when driving with my first wife we got "Lost" she would have a melt down, now with Pam if we miss a turning we laugh and continue on as in the UK you are never more than 20 miles or so from a helpful sign post the result of this we have quite a good knowledge the country south of the Wash who needs a Sat Nag
North of the wash you are out of the civilised world anyway!
Having calmed down a bit now ( :angel:) I confess to using a satnav on a regular basis :-[
Having been a sales rep (all mouth & motorway) for more years than I care to remember, I gained a wealth of knowledge of England/Scotland/Wales geography. In the old days you studied a map and jotted notes for directions but in the last few years I did resort to satnavs.
In Birmingham the damned thing sent me into a private car park and, unbeknownst to me, a barrier had come up behind me so I couldn't get out. I had to ring the door bells on a few flats to ask for the exit code for the barrier. Luckily they seemed quite used to this.
Virtually all my current driving is as sole occupant of the car so a satnav just makes life easy at a time when I need my life as easy as possible :D
Well y'all gonna love this.... on me last NZ trip, landed in Wellington (the windy city) at 1.30 am on a Sunday morning. And yeah, it was windy and pouring down rain. Picked up rental car, was given a ticket to get out of boom gate and out of airport.
Got to boomgate and reached out to put ticket into slot.... wind took it straight out of me hand, didn't it. Half a dozen headlights queued up behind me beeping. Nightmare, believe me. :uneasy:
Quote from: railsquid on November 25, 2014, 11:50:18 PM
Wonderful things, OS maps, and I have yet to come across anything comparable in other countries.
:thankyousign:
Thank you, kind sir. As someone who worked for OS for 42 years making maps for a living, I blush modestly! The general consensus seems to be that the Swiss make maps as good as ours (certainly they build the best survey instruments) but few other countries do. American maps are surprisingly poor.
From when I joined in 1971 to when I retired last year, the job changed utterly. The only piece of equipment I was still using that was the same was a 20m tape measure. We started out with 4H pencils, scales and set squares, penning up our work on plastic film using a ruling pen and carcinogenic ink. Now, OS surveyors trudge round building sites with GPS positioning kit linked to a tablet computer, capturing far more data than we would ever have dreamed of all those years ago.
And, yes, I did/do use sat nav. I did quality control work for a few years, and there was no contest when it comes to finding a specific site in a town you have never visited before. You have to remember that they are only as good as the data they contain and accept the fact that they may lie to you on occasions...
But for everything else, a good map wins hands down (and no, I don't mean Google maps :thumbsdown:)
Chris
Speaking of navigating, a pal of mine was doing his yatchmasters certificate in Plymouth. He had to do a sun shot using a sextant. The one he had was a cheap affair and to the examiner's amusement announced that their position was on the M5, just south of Bristol.
I have a compass on my phone and several times now it has proved invaluable when there was no mobile signal for Google maps.
Not that my geography is any good.. and the fact I don't drive means I have a rather strange set of points of reference most of which are railway stations.
Quote from: EtchedPixels on November 26, 2014, 02:15:38 PM
Not that my geography is any good.. and the fact I don't drive means I have a rather strange set of points of reference most of which are railway stations.
You'd be at home in Japan - pretty much everything is measured in walking minutes from the nearest station. (OTOH except main roads, streets don't actually have names, which makes navigation an interesting challenge sometimes).
Quote from: railsquid on November 26, 2014, 02:20:01 PM
Quote from: EtchedPixels on November 26, 2014, 02:15:38 PM
Not that my geography is any good.. and the fact I don't drive means I have a rather strange set of points of reference most of which are railway stations.
You'd be at home in Japan - pretty much everything is measured in walking minutes from the nearest station. (OTOH except main roads, streets don't actually have names, which makes navigation an interesting challenge sometimes).
I did enjoy Japan although finding anything with the street arrangements was a nightmare. The railway stations don't all help. Not all of them had English name boards so it was a bit the Mahjongg tiles - can you match your ticket with the marks on the sign before the doors close.
B'mann
Welcome to Wellington!! it doesn't surprise me at all; the wind being an important part of a fiendish Wellington City Council plan to extract as much money from 'outsiders' as possible. :angel:
If it's any consolation, many Kiwi's have experienced similar things when in the city , and I've (now hilarious) recollections of opening the boot of my vehicle and having the wind grab a yellow plastic cup (complete with 'smiley face') and haul it up and out and down the road. The cup was last seen describing huge arcs as it bounded (literally) off down the road to 'wherever'. It was never seen again.....
Conversely, when there is no wind (and yes, it does happen, although rarely) the harbour is one of the most beautiful ever.
BTW: I lived in Wellington for several years, both as a child and an adult, so I have a certain 'familiarity' with its 'charms' (along with lots of climate-related stories about it - all true)
Quote from: Bealman on November 26, 2014, 01:15:41 AM
And of course the older 6" maps are invaluable to anyone modelling a real location at a particular time in history.
If you want a detailed map of your prototype, try a polite letter to the county record office, which will probably have the station plans in large scale, often from different eras.
Quote from: steve836 on November 26, 2014, 09:34:47 AM
North of the wash you are out of the civilised world anyway!
Reminded me of one of the best misguided satnavs I have heard of: a lorry driver from Turkey had a load to deliver to Gibraltar, and three days later came to a puzzled stop on the northern coast of the Wash -
Gibraltar Point.... :laugh:
I learned my UK roads geography hitch-hiking in the early 1950s from various RAF stations to Poole including a couple of years from the NW Midlands, from there I was taken as far west as Ludlow and Leominster and east all the way down the A5 to Staples Corner, round the N circular to the A4/A30, and just about every road in between. A lot would depend where the first lift was going, the uniform was the biggest help. To this day I don't rely on maps often and a sat nag would drive me up the wall.
I sometimes wonder at some of the school run mothers that have the sat nag on for the school run every day!
For me Geography is one of the delights of life, thanks to doing most of my schooling in England back in the 1940s and 50s I was taught Geography and Map Drawing, this has certainly helped througout my life.
I also find the geographical study of various countries including back home in the UK, Japan and the USA has become an interesing part of railways both prototype and models.
Here in Oz I find I get a few blank stares when talking about this country many of them from my own family, they seem to know where LA is because of Disneyland but wouldnt have a clue where places are in their own country, what is even stranger is they know Disneyland but when asked what they thought of Anaheim they want to know where that is :goggleeyes:
Maps and Nautical Charts have always held a fascination for me, but I agree that GPS is counter-intuitively making navigation more difficult as you become dependent on it. Of course in this country, geography appears to be a failed art...I was once asked by a secretary Admin Assistant where my accent was from, and when I said "England", she asked if I had driven here (to Chicago) :dunce: .
Quote from: Jon898 on November 27, 2014, 07:56:19 PM
Maps and Nautical Charts have always held a fascination for me, but I agree that GPS is counter-intuitively making navigation more difficult as you become dependent on it. Of course in this country, geography appears to be a failed art...I was once asked by a secretary Admin Assistant where my accent was from, and when I said "England", she asked if I had driven here (to Chicago) :dunce: .
:D :D :D :D
SWMBO had a similar experience when one of her colleagues (Italian American girl qualified as a school teacher) announced she was going on holiday to Europe. The girl was asked how she would deal with the languages and said that she spoke Italian at home and was going to Italy and the Italian part of Switzerland, and the other country she'd visit was Austria and everyone spoke English there :confused2: . SWMBO tried to disabuse her of this assumption and was told in no uncertain terms that of course the Austrians spoke English...hadn't my wife ever seen The Sound of Music? ( Of course, in the film the Austrians (Plummer, Andrews, etc.) all had english accents and the germans all spoke viz ze gut cherman accents)