To be geographically informed, a person must keep in mind a lot of information about people, places, and environments and must be able to organize this information in the appropriate spatial context. A very effective way of doing this is to create and use what can be called “mental maps.” Such a map is an individual’s internalized representation of some aspect or aspects of Earth’s surface. It represents what the person knows about the locations and the characteristics of places at a variety of scales (local to global) from the layout of the student’s bedroom to the distribution of oceans and continents on the surface of the Earth. These maps in the mind provide students with an essential means of making sense of the world, and of storing and recalling information about the shapes and patterns of the physical and human features of Earth. Learning how to create and use mental maps, therefore, is a fundamental part of the process of becoming geographically informed.

Mental maps have several distinguishing characteristics:

• Mental maps are personal and idiosyncratic and are usually a mixture of both objective knowledge and subjective perceptions. They contain objective and precise knowledge about the location of geographic features, such as continents, countries, cities, mountain ranges, and oceans. They also contain more subjective and less precise information, such as impressions of places, rough estimates of relative size, shape, and location, and a general sense of certain connections between places as well as priorities that reflect the mapmaker’s own predilections.
• Mental maps are used in some form by all people throughout their lives. Such maps enable people to know what routes to take when traveling, comprehend what others say or write about various places, and develop an understanding of the world. Mental maps represent ever changing summaries of spatial knowledge and serve as indicators of how well people know the spatial characteristics of places. People develop and refine their mental maps through personal experience and through learning from teachers in the media. They refine at least some of their maps to ever higher levels of completeness and accuracy, and they continue to add information so the maps reflect a growing understanding of a changing world. Critical geographic observation is essential to this development and refinement process, because mental maps reflect people’s skill in observing and thinking about the world in spatial terms (and have nothing to do with their ability to draw).
• As students read, hear, observe, and think more about the world around them, they can add more detail and structure to their maps. As students get older, their mental maps accumulate multiple layers of useful information, and this growth in complexity and utility can provide them with a sense of satisfaction as more places and events in the world can be placed into meaningful spatial context.

If geography is to be useful in creating a framework for understanding the world—past, present, and future—then coherent mental maps must take shape and become increasingly refined as students progress through their school years. Students should be encouraged to develop and update their mental maps to ensure that they continue to have essential knowledge of place location, place characteristics, and other information that will assist them in personal decision-making and in establishing a broad-based perception of Earth from a local to a global perspective. In addition, they need to understand that developing mental maps is a basic skill for everyone who wants to engage in a lifetime of geographic understanding.