WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CHACO?; CAPE PUPIL BUCKS GEOGRAPHY TREND

Earlier this year, L.J. Schultz student Nora Renka was asked which landlocked country is home to the semi-arid region known as the Chaco. The fact that she answered Paraguay sets her apart from many Americans.

The American ignorance of geography has become well known in recent years. A 1990 Gallup survey of 10 countries found that Americans know less about geography than people in Sweden, West Germany, Japan, France and Canada and that Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 know least of all.

One in seven Americans failed to identify the U.S. on an unmarked world map, one in four couldn't find the Pacific Ocean and three in four were in the dark about the location of the Persian Gulf even though the U.S. and Iraq were waging a war.

A knowledge of geography requires more than picking Kazakhstan out on a globe, says Nora, a seventh-grader who on Friday will compete in Columbia in the state finals of the 1993 National Geography Bee.

Time zones, climates, ocean currents, isthmuses, peninsulas, crops, cultures, canals, civilizations, islands, proximities all fit into a whole.

She picks up knowledge about the overall picture from many sources. "National Geographic" and "Time" magazine are mainstays in the household, and the TV series "Nature" is seldom missed.

"She sees places that are really distant and exotic," says her father Russell. "It's the whole idea that the world is a small thing."

The problem with geography, Nora says, often is the way it's presented to students. "It's being taught boring," she said. "...It's mostly practice."

Computer games such as "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego," which requires tracking criminals around the globe, are far better at interesting students in geography, she said.

Russell, a professor of political science at Southeast Missouri State University, says geography ought to be an essential subject for almost everyone.

For example, he said, "If you want to be an environmentalist, I don't know how you can do it knowledgeably without knowing something about the Earth."

At age four, Nora was on the floor crawling all over her father's new copies of the outsized "Historical Atlas of the United States" and "Historical Atlas of North America," recalls her mother, Paula.

Nora, an honor roll student like her older sister Sabrina, plays the clarinet, writes for the school newspaper, The Paw, and collects coins. "Coins get you interested in other countries," she says.

She hasn't travelled outside the U.S. yet, and is a bit envious of 10th-grader Sabrina's upcoming trip to Europe. For now, Nora's favorite place on Earth is the Black Hills.

When Nora answered Paraguay to win her school's Geography Bee, she also won the right to take a written test that eventually qualified her for the state competition.

Friday, she will be pitted against about 100 other Missouri students in grades 5-8. The winner will go to Washington, D.C., in May to compete for a $25,000 college scholarship in the national contest, sponsored by the National Geographic Society.

Among the questions last year's contestants in the National Geography Bee were asked was the name of the small European country governed jointly by the president of France and bishop of Spain (Andorra), and the only U.S. state drained by river systems that flow into the Gulf of Mexico, Hudson Bay and the Pacific Ocean (Montana).

If asked about the 100th meridian, Nora knows that all the states it runs through voted Republican in the most recent presidential election.

"I'm nervous and I'm confident," she said.

Meanwhile, there are signs that ignorance of geography may no longer be characteristic of the American educational system.

Four states now require a high school geography course for admission to the state university system. In 1994, the University of California will require students to take a year of classes in world cultures before admission is granted.