I've noticed that a lot of people in this semi-rural area are unsure of where they can go on their statutory daily walk. We have a lot of new housing occupied largely by young families. It emerges in shouted conversations that many of these people are not map-literate.
This had made me wonder if map reading has been taught in schools since the 1960s. That's when I was at school, when the interpretation of the
1" OS map was a large part of my Geography O Level syllabus.
So tell me: what years were you at school, and did you learn to read a map while you were there? Anyone learn map reading later in life, for occupational reasons?
Funny you should say that, because I was fascinated by maps from a very early age, and I became very adept at reading them. Years later I opted to do geography O Level, because I thought it would be all about maps, and naming where places and roads were etc.
It was very disappointing, there was a tiny bit on OS Map interpretation, but most of it was boring old crop rotation and farming practice (Or that's how it felt !)
For some reason we did AEB instead of NUJMB Geog and it was 20% OS maps. I think another 30% was course work on a topic of our choice. I did New Zealand. I also remember it was a 2 hour rather than 3 hour exam. My geog teacher was brilliant. I found out years later that he'd been a war hero. He never mentioned it at school.
Thinking of rotation ... I find it odd how some people can't read a map without turning it around to match the surroundings, while others have no trouble whatever orientation it's in.
Maybe it's to do with visio-spatial ability or some such thing.
In the late 50s/early 60s in geography we were given OS 1" maps. I can't remember anything about them *except* the map area was Princes Risborough. Being at school in inner London I had no idea where Princes Risborough was! I had, however heard of Aylesbury, which was also on the map.
I loved these maps, and found them fascinating. Ever since, I've always had a collection of OS 1" or 1cm maps of the area I've lived in - the actual map of the area and each surrounding area. I could spend hours looking at them, although, oddly, I've never had much of an interest in the more-detailed or less-detailed maps.
Of course I use satnav to get around now, but still carry a cheapie up-to-date road atlas in case the satnav plays up. And when I'm waiting in the car for something, I might just look through it at random pages to while away the time. It's also, being large format with shiny covers, very useful for protecting your clothes when eating in the car!
We had to learn to read maps at school, as part of CCF if not before. The culmination of the CCF training was that we were given a packed lunch and dumped in the countryside in pairs with an OS map, and had to find our way several miles across country to a selected rendezvous point.
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(Some) American maps are very weird. When my sister and her family were living near Boston for a few years in the late 1990s. they bought a road atlas for the area (probably eastern Massachusetts) and found that the maps were not arranged east to west, north to south, but instead alphabetically by "town", with the scale and the cartographic style varying from one map to another. It made it very difficult to navigate a journey that crossed several different towns because a) even when travelling east to west, the continuation page is not adjacent in the book, b) the scale changes dramatically from one map to the one it is continued onto, depending on the size (in square miles) that each "town" occupies. I suppose the nearest equivalent would be regarding a "town" as being like a miniature British county, including not just a conurbation but all the outlying sparsely-populated roads with ribbon building that continues for many miles outside a built-up town, and therefore you have a map book which shows the equivalent of Rutland and the North Riding each on a double-page spread in a map book. Americans lay great store by which town you live in, even if they actually live in an isolated group of a few houses, nowhere near what we would call a town, village or even hamlet. They have "You are now entering town X" signs in the middle of nowhere, not at the transition between open fields and the outer-suburban housing estate of a town - hence my allusion to "town" as being regarded more like a mini UK county.
When my sister commented on the unusual map to her (American) neighbours, they found it strange to hear about British maps which were east to west, north to south, all at the same scale and with uniform cartographic style. Each to their own ;-)
I'm trying to remember whether we had formal lessons in reading OS maps in geography. It might have been assumed that people didn't need to be taught because they would have learned it from their parents - which was probably a valid assumption. I have always enjoyed looking at OS maps for differences between the older map and the present day. Most of my parents' maps were 7th Series OS maps dating from late 50s and early 60s, so they showed railway lines that were now closed, post Beeching, and didn't show bypass roads that I'd grown up with.
My nephews, who are in their early 20s, cannot read a map to save their lives: if the satnav breaks, they are utterly lost. OK, if I'm in an unfamiliar place I will use a satnav, especially for navigating in a dense network of roads, but the difference is that when I'm going on a journey I will look at a map (probably a "road atlas" type map or an OS map on a site such as Streetmap.co.uk) to know roughly where I am going and roughly which roads I'll need to take, and maybe which places to avoid, whereas my nephews just obey the satnav blindly... and end up being stuck in traffic jams.
Our German teacher kept dropping hints about having done something secret during WWII. He never gave any details, but he boasted about not being able to do so. I imagine his knowledge of German would have been used for something involving intercepting German communications. He was over 100 when he died a year or so ago (according to the obituary in the school magazine) so it's plausible that he would have been old enough to have served in WWII.
It was well known that he was very easy to divert into chatting about any subject under the sun, so he would forget he was supposed to be teaching us about strong and weak German verbs.
Can't remember. We may have done some stuff like basic grids and topographical marks (height etc) but I can't remember of anything else.
I think I did a bit more specific map reading in the short time I was in The Cubs / Scouts. I didn't stay long in either because I was doing more in my private life than I was with them.
I might also map read when passenger for Dad when we were out in the car. He may have also given me a quick overview but I can't remember any more than that.
Only to get about when I was a Field Support Tech.
That said, most of my map reading was done out of need and mostly on roads, although we have also used them hiking and cycle-camping (OS Landranger / Explorer maps) and so was mostly self taught (needs must).
I also bought my first GPS, a Garmin GPS II+ because the Mrs couldn't map read and travel (travel sickness, if we were in the car) and it was a waste of time trying to rely on maps when motorcycle touring as we tended to decide where to go, or what route to use to get there on the fly. We might use the paper map to get the rough idea of how far and to the rough location then the GPS to actually get us there. The point in that case was to get there before dusk as efficiently as possible so not having to manually re-route at roadworks and diversions.
I still run my GPS 'North Up' because I still like to have my general orientation known.
Mum (90) still likes a good map / atlas and has a pretty good understanding of the geography of the UK and the World and I think some of that came from following the progress of my Dad as he went round the world on tankers for Shell. He might come ashore anywhere in the UK when on a trip and she would often find her way to the various ports to meet him by public transport.
A mate (PPL) gave me one of his old flying charts and I used to look at marine charts when boating off the cost with Dad.
I know Princes Risborough well. We lived a few miles away: dad's firm moved office from west London to Risborough in the 70s and we moved to the area so for the first time in his life he'd be living within a few miles of the office. I was always fascinated about why the railway line between Risborough and Wycombe split into two tracks about 1/4 mile apart. It was only when I was working in my first job that I shared an office with a chap who was very interested in railways and he told me the reason: the line had originally been built as single track with a sharp bend and a steep gradient, and when the line was extended and doubled, and would now be carrying heavy freight trains, it was decided that it would be a waste to need two locos to haul the heavy trains over the summit when the route was flat apart from that, so the new "up" (towards London) line was built on a new route with a shallower gradient (though with a deep cutting and a tunnel), with the "down" line being the original alignment with the gradient - OK because the trains were laden going towards London and returning empty.
Same here, often the big AA road atlas they sell it petrol stations for 99p. ;-)
I find they (maps) are generally good at giving you a feeling of somewhere, often better that trying to see it on a small screen. That distinction is getting less with bigger screens and gesture controls etc, being able to go from zoomed out to detail smaller than many road atlas's.
I've also used them (old ones) sacrificially when putting stuff in the boot. ;-)
I always feel bad putting a map in the recycling, them being little works of art (even if I've never used it in anger). ;-)
I think Dad was upset when they removed the need to do dead reckoning navigation (is it called, using a compass / sextant) to get your various maritime tickets because you simply couldn't manage some big ships these days 'manually'?
Eg, by the time you had seen the other ship you were destined to hit it.
I don't swivel a map to read it, but we were taught than when navigating that we should orientate the map in the direction of travel. Rather like satnavs normally do by default.
Our geography teacher was very interested in geology, and it was rumoured that he used a Mars Bar to demonstrate the formation of a rift valley. He once had to use the term "cleavage plane", much to his acute embarrassment and muttered a comment about "cleavage" having another meaning. Without knowing precisely what he meant, we sensed that it was "summat mucky" so we kept worrying away at him and wouldn't let the subject drop.
He was renowned in school folklore firstly for his Mars Bar / rift valley fixation and secondly for his "Kangi Pock" innovation - he got us to cut a letter-box shaped slot in the last page of our exercise books and sellotape that page to the back cover, creating a "kangaroo pocket" that could be used for holding all the handouts that he gave us. Apparently he came very close to patenting the idea and making some money out of it from teachers throughout the land - or so his school magazine obituary said.
I remember our school found out the hard way that it was built above a new coal mine. The Coal Board was planning to extend its coal mines under the area where the school was, and minor subsidence was a remote possibility, so as a precaution they (Coal Board) dug a 6 foot trench all the way round the perimeter and filled it with ash (they must have had a lot of bonfires!) before tarmacking over the trench. The following year, big cracks appeared in the building and for the rest of the time I was at the school there was an enormous timber buttress against one wall, and a staircase had scaffolding all the way up the inside, causing a trip hazard. Evidently the ash trench was as much use as a chocolate teapot in preventing subsidence. Apparently the justification for it was that the whole school would subside as one entity rather than different parts of the ground tilting differently - but for that to work I'd expect a *considerably* deeper trench than 6 feet would be needed ;-)
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