It’s early on a sunny December afternoon, and sunlight streams through the windows of the Edward Hartigan School gymnasium on South State Street. Along one wall two young boys are watching a television monitor and toying with the camera that is aimed at a large map. Mr. World has been setting up the apparatus for the last few minutes.
The boys stroll to the map and the older of the two, about ten, looks vaguely at the vicinity of North Africa.
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“You see?” Mr. World says. “You find such a wide span of geographic awareness in kids. There are a lot of factors that go into it. And kids in one city aren’t more geographically aware than in another. Kids in San Francisco know about continental drift and plate tectonics. Kids here are not going to know as much about earthquakes, but they’ll know more about the Great Lakes.”
Mr. World goes by the name William Fritzmeier when he’s not on the road. He was a professional storyteller and ex-schoolteacher in Rhode Island two years ago when he heard of a program run by the National Geographic Society and funded by Citibank that was aimed at enhancing geography education. Mr. World says the society was sending teaching kits to schools, but it was looking for something “more electrifying.” With his height, beard, and background in education, Fritzmeier was a shoo-in to become the character he refers to as “the caped crusader of cartography.”
“Last year we talked about the world, and about geography, and about the theme ‘Geography, Window on a Changing World,’” he says. “And how the world has changed in a year! Why, just in a weekend you get new countries coming into existence! You get new associations of people! The world is changing at such an enormous pace that it’s hard to keep up! In fact, if you look at the map, it’s the same map I had last year. Can anyone tell me a mistake that shows up on this map? Can anyone tell me something that’s different now than a year ago?”
Mr. World works his audience like an evangelist. His spiel reaches a crescendo when he recounts one of his favorite voyages.
On the way out of the gym one class shows Mr. World the pictures they have drawn of familiar places–a learning activity he suggested during his visit last year. The drawings show the Robert Taylor Homes, downtown office buildings, and many versions of the Sears Tower. “That’s nice,” says Mr. World. “Did you guys know the Sears Tower is the highest point in Illinois?”
