The National Council of Churches and several United Nations agencies have endorsed maps that use the Peters Projection over those that use the Mercator Projection. German mapmaker Arno Peters has denounced the widely used Mercator Projection as an example of "European Arrogance," since, to render most of the earth's land mass as accurately as possible, it makes the Northern Hemisphere appear relatively large compared to the Southern Hemisphere, which has less land mass and population. This makes Greenland appear to be the same size as Australia, even though Australia is more than three times the size of Greenland.

The Texas Education Agency, which heavily influences textbook content nationwide, now requires a disclaimer placed next to the Mercator Projection and inclusion of comparison with other maps. "In our society," one critic claimed, "we unconsciously equate size with importance and even power, and if the third world countries are misrepresented, they are likely to be valued less." A spokesman for the National Council of Churches' publishing organization commented, "The political implications of this map are true, whereas the political implications of the Mercator map are false."

It has always been known that the Mercator Projection represents the earth's geography inaccurately—indeed, any two-dimensional projection of a spherical surface will be inaccurate in some way—but it is only recently that political implications have been attached to this fact. The Mercator Projection shifts its midpoint latitude line up from the equator, while keeping both latitude and longitude lines straight. The Peters Projection also keeps navigational lines straight, but while attempting to render area sizes equally, it grossly distorts the shape of land masses. Equatorial continents such as Africa and South America appear tall and thin, while polar regions appear short and wide.

Other projection methods address the problem by bending navigational lines. The Robinson Projection, used by the National Geographic Society, keeps latitude lines straight but bends longitude lines outward. The Van der Grinten Projection adapts this approach by bending latitude lines downward towards its center in an attempt to keep polar areas from receding into shapelessness. (One map using the Van der Grinten Projection sets the earth "upside-down"—that is, with Australia, South America, and Africa on "top"—to challenge students' orientation and prioritization of continents.) Employing a radically different method that solves many of these problems while causing others, the Interrupted Sinusoidal Projection cuts the earth into orange-peel-like segments, each segment joined at the equator. The Fuller/Dymaxion Projection divides the sphere into triangular segments, all of which are connected in a seemingly haphazard way that makes it difficult to orient one's self relative to other segments, and scrambles perception of latitude and longitude.

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