[boomboomsubban]

I had an American experience in several different schools, and our maps had the Atlantic in the middle. I think that's more common, so people are down voting the posts stating the bizarre America in the center map is a staple of US schools.

It's probably something decided by state education boards, so whichever map your state decided was all you saw for twelve years. Leading you to think the entire US had the same.

[pmachinery]

Yes, you could be right with that. I guess not enough kids are playing Risk.

Although it can seem pettily nationalistic (and probably is to some extent), for quickly illustrating "You Are Here", and the relative positions of other countries to your own, centring maybe makes more sense than having some far away country at the centre.

It seems pretty common/natural in different countries too. I wondered if a 'most accurate map' exists, and found Authagraph:

https://ourplnt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/AuthaGraph-wo...

https://ourplnt.com/authagraph-probably-the-most-accurate-wo...

It's not difficult to find the origin country of the map, Japan.

[rendall]

I went to public school in San Francisco; Fairfax County, VA; and Springfield, MA. These US-centric maps were all that I saw.

As an aside, I also had 6 years of American Revolution, all told. Every time we moved, the new district would be starting that unit. So annoying