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9486 in the collection
Idyll Banter: Does anybody really know what time (zone) it is?
Ohanian Comment: This is a version of Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? Or maybe Carmen Miranda. I post it for a few reasons:
1) I think it's funny.
2) Yes, I also think it's outrageous.
3) Extended background with some pedagogical input:
When I team taught 7th and 8th grade language arts, for some reason my partmer and I came up with the goal of kids understanding just where they were located, geographically speaking. We kept lowering our standards--to the point of a quiz saying: "Name one river in this state." (Our school was located one block away from the Hudson River, a fact we had pointed out to our students at the beginning of every class for six months. [Invariably, when asked to name a state, a few kids would write "United States," the difference between 'state' and 'united states' being obscure.]
When I visited the kindergarten of my good friend, her students could point to a US map and locate the state from which I came. Were her students smart and mine stupid? I don't think so. I think part of the deal was her students came from families who traveled; mine did not.
Yes, "traveled" is code for "people of means." Always, always, we must be cognizant of what it means to grow up in poverty in this country. One thing that does is stunt a child's perception of where he is located--geography-wise and otherwise. Children get cues from so many sources. Travel happens to be one of them. Not just their own travel but conversations and memorabilia of the travels of others. Postcards are a small example. When I went to California for Christmas vacation, I sent all of my students a postcard. This created quite a sensation. They brought those cards to school. And more than half a dozen kids said, "I got your card!! Did you get mine?"
Puzzled, I said, "But you couldn't write me. You didn't have my address."
"Yes, there it is!" Insisted David. "Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California. " There it is. I wrote you there."
So I figure I have lots of cards waiting for me at the Golden Gate Bridge, the next time I'm out that way.
The first time I went to a conference in Cincinnati and the pilot announced we were landing at the Northern Kentucky International airport, I panicked. Having no notion that Kentucky and Ohio were next to each other, I was sure I'd gotten on the wrong plane. Kentucky? My grandmother was born in Kentucky. How did it get next to Ohio? What else is over there??? I haven't a clue.
I still find all this rather mysterious and amazing. Traveling to Kentucky recently, I discovered that it was closer to my destination to land in Nashville than Louisville. And Indiana was a good option. Indiana! Can you imagine?? Did you ever consider Indiana and Kentucky in the same breath?
But I know where Washington D. C. is, and I know what they do there.
Take note in the essay below of how gentle Chris Bohjalian is in his astonishment at the quality of a young adult's knowledge. Chris is a columnist for the Burlington Free Press as well as a fine novelist. Take a look at his Mother's Day tribute. I venture to say it is like no other, starting out with, "My father had a pretty good relationship with his mother-in-law. He called her Fat Irene." Is that a good opening, or what?
By Chris Bohjalian
The other day I was on an airplane. You must think I am always on airplanes. I am. There are barn swallows that spend less time in the air than I do.
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I was flying home from Nashville via Washington, D.C., and sitting across the aisle from me was a woman in her late-20s who manages a children's clothing store in Tennessee. I mention her job so you know that she has actual, grown-up responsibilities -- work that matters -- and wasn't merely going to the nation's capital because she has something to do with our government. We were sitting opposite the flight attendant, who was facing us in the jump seat.
As we were climbing after takeoff, the woman said to the flight attendant, "I don't fly much. Do you?"
The flight attendant, a woman a little older than the store manager, thought she was kidding and laughed graciously.
"I've never been to Washington," the passenger went on. "I thought it would be a much longer flight to the West Coast."
The flight attendant and I glanced at each other, but I wasn't about to say a word. Then she said patiently to the store manager, "We're going to Washington, D.C. The nation's capital. Are you on the right plane?"
"Oh, I know that," the woman giggled. "I'm going to a wedding there. It just looked so far away on the map."
"Washington state is far away from Nashville," the flight attendant said patiently. "But the capital? Not so much."
At this point the woman said -- and this is an actual quote, not a columnist's hyperbole -- "What? Isn't Washington, D.C., in Washington state? Why would the city not be with the state? Isn't Washington in Washington!"
I won't torment you with the rest of the conversation, but this woman also didn't realize that Chicago was north of Nashville and that the flight east was passing through a time zone. When I explained to her that our time in the air was one hour shorter than it showed on her itinerary because we were moving from the Central to the Eastern Time Zone, it was as if I had just broken the news to her that the Earth revolves around the sun or that some "American Idol" contestants have coaching.
Now, this woman was no idiot. She was pretty sharp when it came to children's coaching. To wit: She told me more than I needed to know about the trend toward organic T-shirts in kids' wear, and she observed rightly that my daughter would have loved her store's "completely rockin' guitar skirts" if she were five or six years younger.
But the idea that she could manage a small business and yet have no clue that Washington, D.C., is three time zones east of Washington state -- or that her own city was a time zone west of the nation's capital -- scared the heck out of me. At the risk of sounding middle-aged and cranky (two things I am, though I try not to flaunt it), I find it disturbing that someone well into her 20s can function in business without having mastered time zones. I would be more forgiving if she lived in parts of Indiana, where no one has mastered time zones because no one's sure what time zone they're in. Eastern? Central? Hoosier? It seems to change annually there. Likewise, it would be one thing to presume Washington, D.C., was near Seattle if you were 7 years old. But 27?
So, here's a solution. Imagine if before any of us could log onto Facebook or iTunes, we had to watch a 15 second edu-bit: One moment it was a map that showed us where Estonia was, for instance, and the next it might be the definition of "ablution." After that there might be a fact about Iraq. Imagine if all television shows (especially reality TV shows) had to offer a 30-second edu-mercial every 30 minutes that taught us something about the Constitution. Or Vietnam. Or ... time zones.
Can we reverse the trend toward imbecility? Probably not. But we can at least encourage adults to know what time zone they're in.
— Chris Bohjalian with commentary by Ohanian
Burlington Free Press
2008-06-01
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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