> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://digitalteachernotes.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The World Map Is Changing. What Does It Mean for Schools? - URL: https://digitalteachernotes.com/the-world-map-is-changing-what-does-it-mean-for-schools/ - Published: 2026-09-05T09:01:04.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-05T09:01:04.000Z - Description: The UN has backed a move toward world maps that show Africa and other regions at their true relative size. For schools, the change could be a lesson in more than geography. - Author: Digital Teacher - Tags: News The familiar world map hanging in classrooms may be about to change. On September 4, the **United Nations General Assembly voted 164–1, with six abstentions, in favor of a resolution promoting maps that represent the relative sizes of countries and continents more accurately.** At the center of the debate is something generations of students have seen in classrooms: the **Mercator projection**. And one of its most striking distortions is Africa. ## Africa is much bigger than it looks On a typical Mercator world map, Greenland can appear surprisingly close to Africa in size. In reality, **Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland**. The problem isn't that the Mercator projection was badly designed. Created in 1569, it was extremely useful for navigation because it preserves angles and directions. But every flat map of a spherical planet has to distort something. With Mercator, the distortion becomes increasingly dramatic as you move toward the poles. Countries such as Canada and Russia appear much larger relative to equatorial regions than they actually are. The new UN resolution promotes the **Equal Earth projection**, introduced in 2018, which preserves relative land areas much more accurately. [Read Reuters' report on the UN vote](https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/un-approves-resolution-support-map-that-shows-africas-true-size-2026-09-04/?ref=digitalteachernotes.com) ## What happens in schools? Nothing changes overnight. The resolution is **not legally binding**, and it doesn't ban the Mercator projection. Mercator also remains useful for purposes such as maritime and aerial navigation. But education is explicitly part of the initiative. The African Union is encouraging **educational systems, publishers, international institutions and digital platforms** to progressively adopt maps that represent land areas more accurately. Togo, which led the initiative at the UN on behalf of African states, says it plans to update its own school geography materials by the end of 2026. [Read the African Union statement](https://au.int/en/pressreleases/20260904/communique-auc-chairperson-adoption-correct-map-resolution?ref=digitalteachernotes.com) ## There's a great geography lesson hiding in this news For teachers, perhaps the most interesting lesson isn't simply: **“Mercator is wrong. Use Equal Earth.”** It's that **there is no perfect flat map of the world**. Every map projection makes choices about what to preserve and what to distort. Put a Mercator map next to an Equal Earth map and ask students: **What changed?** Then compare the real sizes of Africa, Greenland, Europe, Russia and Canada. Why do they look different? Why was Mercator useful to sailors? What should a classroom world map prioritize? And could the map we grow up seeing influence how we imagine the importance or scale of different parts of the world? Suddenly a news story about cartography becomes a lesson in **geography, mathematics, history and visual literacy**. Perhaps that's the most useful consequence of the UN vote for education. The world itself hasn't changed size. But the way students see it might. ### Sources - [Reuters — UN approves resolution in support of map that shows Africa's true size](https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/un-approves-resolution-support-map-that-shows-africas-true-size-2026-09-04/?ref=digitalteachernotes.com) - [African Union — Communiqué on the adoption of the “Correct The Map” resolution](https://au.int/en/pressreleases/20260904/communique-auc-chairperson-adoption-correct-map-resolution?ref=digitalteachernotes.com)