THE
USE OF CARTOGRAPHIC MATERIAL IN HIGH SCHOOL: DIAGNOSIS AND CONSEQUENCES
Mariana Alesia Campos
(Departamento de
Geografía, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos
Aires, Puán 480, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Corresponding author: alesia_76@yahoo.it phone: ++54-11-45667240
alesia_76@yahoo.it
Abstract
In the
contents of obligatory education in Argentina the teaching of the
essential concepts of cartography is planned. These concepts are considered
necessary tools to understand and to analyze the organization of the
geographical space. Since 2004, the teachers of the chair of Cartography in the
Geography careers (Facultad de Filosofìa
y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)
make the students perform a test with the aim of getting a diagnosis of the
knowledge on cartographic tools that they bring from the high school. The first
day of practical class, a different topographic chart is given to each student,
and they are asked to make a brief analysis of the topographic chart. The results
of the test showed that the 61,4% of the students made
a sequential reading of the chart, enumerating the whole elements in it. This way to reading the chart matches with a
descriptive geography, which looks for answers about the localization of variety
elements. We also observed that there is an ignorance about other concepts as
coordinates and projection systems.. These results
would indicate that there is a big distance between the educational plans and
what is actually taught at school