The contest is down to two finalists, you and a fellow seventh grader, and it is the tie-breaker round. You have fifteen seconds to answer this question: About 20 percent of the people in Central America’s smallest country in area emigrated during a long civil war. Name this country.
Your foot is tapping and your heart is pounding. You nod, frowning, and scribble on your small white board. Is it the correct answer?
It was for Miles Berry, who had jotted down the winning words: El Salvador, breaking a tie with fellow Stuart McCallum and winning the 2016 Fenn Geographic Bee. Miles will take a test administered by John Sharon, chair of the social studies department, and if he qualifies, he will move on to the state bee in April, where he could compete with as many as 100 of the highest-scoring students in Massachusetts. From there, he could advance to the national level, where the prize is a $50,000 college scholarship.
Ten finalists in grades four through eight battled it out onstage in Ward Hall after participating in preliminary rounds in their social studies classes. The National Geographic Bee is designed to encourage teachers to include geography in their classrooms, spark student interest in the subject, and increase public awareness about geography. The questions address United States and world geography, and some had some adults in the hall scratching their heads. To wit: Corrientes, Santa Fe, and Rosario are three major cities that lie upstream from the Río de la Plata estuary in which country? (The answer is Argentina.)
John organizes and moderates the Bee, assisted by social studies teachers and ninth graders who solicit answers from the audience once the contestants have committed theirs to their white boards. Geography, John says, “is essential for understanding why things happen to some people and not others,” adding that “everything we social studies teachers teach is in the context of a place.” Fenn’s social studies curriculum is intended to expose students to the world beyond their borders. This year, for example, the sixth grade social studies course has been retooled and renamed Geography and World Cultures. “At every level we are making a push to go global,” says John.
Also competing in the Bee on stage were fourth graders Will Simon and Brandon McCray; fifth graders Sam Modur and Michael Mariani; sixth graders Tyler McGarry and Ryan Chandler, and eighth graders Jack Folz and Grey Hussey. Matthew Gainsboro was to have competed for the eighth grade but was unable to attend due to illness, and Jack was willing to step in to replace him.