Territory through geographic maps: a didactic model for Primary and Secondary School

Abstract

Can the geographic map have its autonomous cognitive value and, therefore, also an autonomous educational value in Primary and Secondary School? The arguments for a negative answer are well known by now. Instead, more difficult is trying to illustrate how and why, in a learning process, the geographic map can represent something more than a simple didactic tool for localizing and visualizing the places and phenomena studied. A possibility in such direction is offered by approaching cartography as an extension of man's cognitive and symbolic control over reality (naming process). From the idea that the map is an extension of the naming process, it is possible to suppose that the map is able to produce verbal and nominal functions through which it elaborates the propositions that specify the charted places at several levels. To understand how the map produces propositions, it will be necessary to clarify how names (subjects and predicates) appear and how verbs act in the cartographic document.