Learn with World Map by Satona

In the Academic English class, our professor told us to draw a world map. I was very confused because I have never drawn world map without watching a model and I could not remember a shape of countries except Japan. And I could not draw island countries except Japan, Australia and New Zealand. I realized that I did not know much about world geographical features. Next, our professor told us to watch classmates’ map. I worried about my map’s quality. And I thought I didn’t want classmates to watch my map. But every classmate didn’t draw in detail and also most of them didn’t draw island countries except Japan. I thought that what I have to do was not to compare the quality of map, but to compare the differences in the way of drawing.

By the way, I expected that my classmates who came from foreign countries drew quite different map from mine because when I was an elementary school student, I heard other country’s world map is quite different from that of Japan. But all of my classmates are from Asia. So the part that we draw in the center of map was almost same. And I found that almost every one of classmates drew Japan and Japan in their map was big. But almost everyone did not draw Okinawa. And I found that some of classmates seemed to draw the world as one thing and others seemed to draw the world separately according to the continent. After we watched others’ map, professor asked us what we found. My classmates said a lot of points I did not find.

 I thought that it is exciting to hear various opinions and that there were various perspectives. And I thought I want to have more perspectives and to find more. It is very important thing to have many perspectives. When we have to solve some problems, we couldn’t solve if we have only one perspective. We have to consider a problem in all its aspects. I think this is the reason why we discuss. But we cannot always discuss. When you must decide by yourself, you need as many opinions as you can have. Because many opinion increase the amount of your choices and you can choose better answer. When you become a working member of society, you must do everything by yourself. You can’t rely on anyone. And society asks you for a right judgment. So we need many perspectives.

 After the class, I thought about this task’s purpose. Our professor didn’t say that. I want some reasons why we did this task. Why did our professor tell us to do these tasks? Did he want us to improve our skill to find differences? Did he want us to realize that we think about something from different perspectives? I tried to find this task’s purpose. But I couldn’t find. But I think I can find later. I don’t think that there are meaningless classes in all my life. If I can’t understand meaning of classes when I am participating, 

 Satona