Last Tuesday’s second presidential debate between Senators
Barack Obama and John McCain proved to be quite heated! Both candidates answered pre-selected
questions from undecided voters, and addressed concerns with health care,
foreign policy, and the economy. Even
though both Senators spent most of the debate tackling these large issues,
geography and geographic education snuck into their dialogue at times (or is
geography always an underlying theme in politics?)

Senator Obama placed America’s role in the global
economy into the hands of its educational system. When asked which issue he would prioritize
out of health care, energy, and entitlement reform, Senator Obama listed education instead of entitlement programs. He said, “We’ve got to deal with education so
that our young people are competitive in a global economy,” implying that
American education could use a dose of global perspective to heal its ailing
economy, and better-prepare its students to understand global connections.

Geography did not escape Senator McCain’s responses either. When
answering the final question of the night, Senator McCain commented, “The
challenges that we {as Americans} face are unprecedented. Americans are hurting
tonight in a way they have not in our generation. There are challenges
around the world that are new and different and they will be different — we
will be talking about countries sometime in the future that we hardly know
where they are on the map…”

Continue reading “Geography…debated.”