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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Boy’s world

Vicki Hyman Newhouse News Service

Geographers study where things are located on the surface of the Earth, and why. So they have noted that boys are located on the stage at the annual National Geographic Bee in Washington, D.C., and girls are … not.

Why boys appear to excel at this particular brand of mental athletics is the stumper. Certainly there are female atlas-worshipping, globe-fondling social scientists who can not only pinpoint the Aozou Strip on a map, but name the natural resource at the center of the recently resolved territorial dispute there. (Northern Chad and uranium, for those keeping score at home.)

But in the 16-year history of the bee, every national champ but one has been male. Girls are also vastly underrepresented in state-level contests.

For example, of the 100 students who competed at the New Jersey state contest at Rutgers University last week, fewer than a dozen were girls, and none made it to the finals. The same percentage holds true for the national competition this year, where 50 contestants — only four of them girls — will compete May 24-25 for a $25,000 scholarship.

The glaring imbalance embodies the debate about innate intellectual power between the sexes, stoked earlier this year by Harvard President Lawrence Summers. Speaking about the sciences and engineering,

Summers ventured a few hypotheses, including socialization, discrimination and the reluctance of women to work the long hours to succeed at the top of the scientific world.

Oh, and that men and women have different aptitudes in math and the sciences.

As Teen Talk Barbie might say, “Geography is tough!”

Summers later apologized.

The National Geographic Society commissioned Penn State University for a study on the disparity in 1996, and the researchers reported a slight difference in what girls and boys know about geography.

So as the competition moves to higher levels, more girls get knocked out, and the gulf widens.

That doesn’t explain why boys may be better at geography.

They may just be better at geography bees.

The girls who competed at the New Jersey finals were quick to dismiss Summers’ aptitude hypothesis — “He’s crazy,” said Kathryn Materna, a seventh-grader from Metuchen — but they had their own theories.

“Some girls are afraid of looking nerdy so they don’t try as hard at the school level,” Kathryn said.

Anastasia Mazza, a seventh-grader from Cinnaminson, said she knows a lot of competitive girls in her class.

But, “I think girls are better at stating their opinions and boys are better at stating facts.”

She attributed her own geography success to instinct more than memorization.

Her fallback method for answering a brain-teaser: “Pick the one that sounds the prettiest.”

Nearly 5 million students from the fourth to the eighth grades participated in school-level geography bees last November.

The winners had to take a written qualifying test, and the top 100 or so scorers made it to the finals of each state.

The National Geographic Society started the bee in 1989, after a survey showed that many U.S. youths are ignorant of basic geography. Forget Aozou.

One in five Americans couldn’t find America on a map.

Today, 16 students are $25,000 richer, but not much else has changed.

The most recent survey in 2002 — the year after the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan — showed that only 17 percent could find Afghanistan on a map. (More could place the most recent “Survivor” locale in the South Pacific.)

Only a fourth of the 18- to 24-year-olds polled could estimate U.S. population, and only a third could find the Pacific Ocean.

Educators explain that geography in the classroom lost popularity by the 1970s because of its emphasis on rote memorization.

Reviewing lists of foreign capitals, far-off provinces and obscure atolls went by the wayside as schools rolled geography, civics and history into social studies.

Yet it is the ability to instantly recall obscure atolls that is key to winning the bee.

Boys may have the edge there, and in quiz bowls, too, where men outnumber women by 3-to-1 at the high school level, said Robert Hentzel.

Quiz bowls are head-to-head with a strong individual focus, noted Hentzel, president of National Academic Quiz Tournaments, which runs and develops the material used in the contests.

Pop psychologists would say boys, raised to be aggressive and glory in individual splendor, would naturally excel, he said.

“It sounds reasonable to me. I can’t say anything superintelligent about that.”

Compared with fast-paced quiz bowls and the geography bee, spelling bees are almost leisurely. Boys and girls compete in equal numbers at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and slightly more girls have won the national title.

There’s a different tension at the geography bee, said Sarah Witham Bednarz, an associate professor of geography at Texas A&M who oversees a national geography education initiative.

“You can just see the girls. They just lose their guts. … Boys are just more confident.”

Male or female, some students just have more interest in geography.

For proof, ask Susannah Batko-Yovino, the 1990 winner of the national bee and the only girl to take the title.

Growing up, she was given maps and books about different parts of the world.

“I thought it was interesting, so studying for it wasn’t a chore.”

Batko-Yovino, now in her final year at the University of Maryland’s medical school, said she’s not ready to write off girls.

“It has a lot to do with whether people are encouraged. Maybe girls are not encouraged.”

Reading material and playtime activities could play a part. Girls tend to read more fiction, Bednarz said, and boys read more action-oriented adventure stories.

Boys also play more video games, which train them to explore different environments to pick up clues that help them win.

Could it be biological?

Research shows that men have better spatial skills than women, which gives them an advantage in navigation and helps them interpret maps better.

That would be convenient, if geography bees were won or lost for knowing the way to San Jose.

The occasional question requires students to compare the location of two places — which is farther east, Jamaica or Trinidad? (Trinidad) — but most concern fixed points, such as the location of the European Union headquarters (Brussels).

“The geography bee is not really what we do in geography,” said Robin Leichenko, an associate geography professor at Rutgers University.

“We don’t memorize place names. Some of those kids probably know their place names more than people with Ph.D.s.”

The geography gap is overblown, Leichenko said.

“It’s a game. I’d rather they understand theories and concepts and broader models about why things are the way they are.

“If they need a geographic fact, they can look it up.”