In the video we watched in class, they made many points on why the maps should be switched. The first reason was because the Mercator projection gained European attitudes and created an ethnic bias against other 3rd world countries. I think this is unfair because we should be learning what the map looks like in reality, not what the Europeans perceive it as. This map was originally made to help European sailors, it wasn't made to learn about in a classroom setting.
In the video, the cartographers also compared the size of Greenland to Africa. In the Mercator map, Greenland looks as if it is half the size of Africa and I've always thought Greenland was really big, but in reality, Africa is around 14 times larger than Greenland. I think this is crazy how we've been using the Mercator map to learn the whole time, even though its very different from the real world. For example, many countries on the map aren't even placed in the correct spot and everything is distorted, while we had no idea.
I think the points the cartographers made in the video are extremely valid and make sense. I don't know why the map hasn't been changed even though it has been wrong and bias for thousands of years. I think if we did switch the maps it would be very beneficial and better for learning about in a classroom environment. If we ended up making the southern hemisphere at the top of the map and the northern hemisphere at the bottom, it would be confusing but it would help continents that have been overlooked to finally have people learn more about those areas. I believe schools should start enforcing the Peters projection map because it would help teach students where the continents are correctly located and how big their sizes actually are.
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