Most students who grew up in the United States were exposed to the geometry of state boundaries before the age of five. This early exposure probably occurred as they put together the classic wooden puzzle of the U.S. This lesson expands upon that early experience of sorting the square states of the Midwest and West, switching and turning Vermont and New Hampshire until they fit, and searching for the lost pieces of Rhode Island and Delaware! Encouraging students to attend to the shapes of countries will help them to interpret the elements of conflict and cooperation in historical and current events, to increase the sophistication of their mental maps, and to weigh the significance of a country's relative location.

Geography, social studies, economics, history

Standard 13: "How the forces of cooperation and conflict among people influence the division and control of Earth's surface"

Two hours

• A collection of outline maps of individual countries from the Xpeditions atlas
• Wall map of the world
• Overhead projector
• Almanac or similar reference with historical and current information about individual countries
• World atlas

Students will

• understand some of the factors that affect the cohesiveness and integration of countries; and
• be able to identify, classify, and explain ways in which a country's borders might affect its political cohesiveness.

Provide students with outline maps of the following places: Japan, Madagascar, Switzerland, the Philippines, China, New Zealand, Cyprus, and Canada.

Ask them what Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Canada have in common.

Once a lengthy list of similarities is collected, students can form a working definition of the morphology term "fragmented" (a political entity whose territory consists of several separated parts).

Ask students to guess the meanings of the following territorial morphology categories: "elongated," "perforated," "compact," and "protruded."

Provide students with the following formal definitions as needed (from H.J. de Blij and Peter O. Muller, Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts. John Wiley and Sons, 1997.)

elongated: a state whose territory is decidedly "long and narrow in that its length is at least six times greater than its average width"

perforated: a state whose territory completely surrounds that of another state

compact: a state that possesses a roughly circular, oval, or rectangular territory in which the distance from the geometric center to any point on the boundary exhibits little variance

protruded: a state that exhibits a narrow, elongated land extension leading away from the main body of the territory

Using a large world map, ask students to locate and identify examples for each category. Combine the lists, then have students consider the following questions and defend their examples:

• Is there any regular or distinctive pattern evident within a category? (Examples: Elongated and protruded countries often have coastlines. Many fragmented countries are located on the Pacific Rim.)
• In what ways might the shape of the political units promote unity or division?
• Does land or water separate the parts? Explain how being separated by water is different from being separated by land.

Ask students to locate the following places, then determine the significance of their locations:

• Angola's Cabinda district
• Russia's Kaliningrad
• Alaska
• Hawaii

Ask students to locate the following places, then to determine the significance of their locations:

• Vatican City
• San Marino
• Lesotho

Provide students with the following formal definitions from Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts.

exclave: a bounded, non-island piece of territory that is part of a particular state but is separated from it by the territory of another state

enclave: a piece of territory surrounded by another political unit of which it is not a part

Ask students to consider how exclaves and enclaves are similar and different from other landlocked countries.

Have students work in groups to study countries that have a variety of shapes. Distribute reference materials and ask the students to review the histories and current issues in each of the countries forces pull a country together or tear it apart? Are those forces influenced by the shape of the countries? Provide opportunities for the students to present their findings.

Remind students that the shape of a state or country does not determine—but can influence—unity or division among people.

Ask students to consider additional factors that might affect a country's cohesiveness. Answers might include size, relative location, ethnic distribution, population, technology, sophistication of communication and transportation systems, location and amount of natural resources.

Ask students to do the following:

• Given the outline of a real or fictitious political entity, describe how its shape might promote or inhibit political cohesiveness.
• Design, sketch, identify, and discuss the boundaries of an ideally shaped political unit.
• Label countries on a world map according to morphology categories: fragmented, elongated, compact, protruded, perforated, and exclaves and enclaves

• Ask students to speculate about how the shape and size of a country might affect its economic activities and cultural characteristics.
  
  
• Consider the relationship between the location of a country's capital city and its shape, then speculate about the effect of the city's location on political cohesiveness. Collect information on instances in which capital cities have been relocated.
  
  
• Identify and collect information about landlocked countries.

Sarah McCormick of Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, California, contributed classroom ideas for Standard 13.

CIA World Factbook
National Geographic: MapMachine
National Geographic: Xpeditions Activity—Boundary Ballads