Think of the Children

Each time I see a map of Turkey my heart skips a beat. Take a look.

Map of Turkey

Now think of all those little Turkish school children struggling to reproduce a hand-drawn image of the map for their notebooks on Turkish history, and you can understand why seeing a map of Turkey causes me unrest.

In elementary school I used to wish I were from one of those states that had maps with lots of straight lines like Colorado, Wyoming, or Utah instead of from Texas because drawing maps of Texas was just hard.  


I started looking at state flags.  The Texas flag wasn't so bad.  The lone star on the Texas flag always gave me fits, but the nice tri-color background with straight lines was easily reproduced. That means a lot. If I couldn't draw a picture of our state map, at least I could draw one of the flag.  Those poor kids in Wyoming will never, never be able to draw their flag, and it is plain sad.

State Flag of Texas

In fifth grade the big project was for the students to select a state, write a letter (using our newly learned letter-writing and envelope-addressing skills) to that state's department of tourism asking for pamphlets and maps, and use what we received in the mail to create an elaborate notebook about the state.

State Flag of Wyoming

It was so exciting to receive the big packet of information, and we all brought our packets to school to show them to our friends. The poor kid who choose Wyoming acted like he'd won a prize or something when his packet arrived, but I knew the ugly truth—we'd all have to include a hand-drawn map of the state we chose. And with the buffalo image and the state seal right there in the middle of Wyoming's map, well, not even a new box of map colors could save the day.

Think about this. If trying to reproduce the state flag of Wyoming could bring a strong fifth grade Texas boy to his knees, what must be happening in the elementary schools all across Turkey? 

Sobering thought, isn't it?