Yes? The shapes of countries- and their relation to other countries around them- is literally the most important part of learning geography in some respects, because of how much that shape is influenced by- and has been influenced by- the surroundings, the socioeconomic and sociopolitical history, etc etc.

The problem with that is that it gives a completely incorrect idea of what an individual country looks like, in a way that gives a false impression to kids about what the countries even look like. Suddenly they have to look at one map, and recognize a country, and then look at a zoomed in, more accurate map, and recognize it in a completely different shape. To be frank, most people’s geography knowledge is already bad enough- doubling the amount of shapes they need to learn is basically a non-starter.

For classroom instruction, a globe should be being used anyway- that’s the gold standard. Why go through all the work and effort of introducing a worse solution, that doubles the amount of studying, and is made completely useless when it can be replaced by a $10 globe?

Actually, fun fact, the entire point of the Mercator projection is that it DOES maintain shapes/angles, just not scale. It’s a nautical map, it’s for sailing. That’s why when you look at a mercator map and a globe, the countries look about the same, just potentially different sizes- because that’s literally the point of it.

I’m going to be honest, this just looks utterly useless for any country that isn’t south africa, and ESPECIALLY useless for any country in the northern hemisphere.

Like, yes, sure, you’ve made all the country’s areas roughly equal, but also every single country that isn’t south africa is a distorted, warped mess that looks nothing like its actual shape.

Look at parts of europe- every country is a COMPLETELY USELESS shape. Three quarters of them have been turned into diagonal lines. How the fuck is that useful? Europe is the worst area in that regard, but by no means the only one.

It makes it literally useless as a map.

In light of this comment, please learn any media literacy skills.

Because a lot of them know that if there was any kind of safety or training requirements, or a psyche or physical test, they would fail it.