A mental map of the world

One of the major issues in our world today is that we're a people of specialties. This means that we don't have basic interpretative frameworks in which to place novel facts. Because of the abstruse and formal nature of the discipline, this is probably starkest in the domain of science, but it is not restricted to only science. Consider geography. In many ways this is "low hanging" cognitive fruit in the shallow part of the learning curve which mostly consists of assembly of facts, but because of the shifts in emphases in American education geography has tended to get short shrift. This means that whenever there's a foreign policy crisis middle-brow journals of record such as The New York Times have to commission pieces about nations such as Libya which read like a "first book" for six year olds on that nation (and on political weblogs commenters proudly brandish their "first book" level of knowledge). But a bigger general issue seems to be in relation to climate. "Climate Change" is in the news constantly, but the average person on the street seems to have zero historical perspective on events such as the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, let alone more obscure epochs such as the Younger Dryas. Fair enough, it isn't as if Deep Time is ever going to be broadly interesting. But more disturbing to me is the total lack of perspective when it comes to current spatial patterns. For example, a friend who has college degrees in history and philosophy, has traveled to Europe, Canada, and is planning a trip to Thailand and the Philippines, thought China was further to the north than Europe. Take a look at this map: