The West Wing

In the West Wing, the OCSE came to the White House to explain why it should be mandatory for every public school to use the Peters World Map instead of the Mercator Map. They said that “the Mercator Projection has fostered European imperialist attitudes for centuries and created an ethnic bias against a third world.”  They believe this is happening because European countries appear on the Mercator Map much larger than they actually are. In the Mercator Map, Greenland and Africa look to be around the same size, but in reality, Greenland is 14 times smaller than Africa. On the Map, Europe looks much larger than South America, but in real life, South America is double Europe’s size. Alaska appears three times as big as Mexico when Mexico is much larger. Germany is also in the wrong spot. All of these examples are reasons that the Peters World Map should be used instead pf the Mercator.