Same Sky Magazine

How Many Continents Do You Think There Are?

Who would’ve thought that some “fact” like the number of continents in the world could be so culturally-bound? In fact it’s a subject I’ve simply learned to avoid in a multicultural class because there are usually more answers to the question of “How many continents are there?” than there are people in the class.

English-Speaking People and the Seven Continents

Growing up in Australia - and as far as I’ve heard, in any English-speaking country - I was told, absolutely matter-of-factly, that there are seven continents. Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, and my own country of Australia. We were even taught to be proud of the fact that we were the only country that was a continent, as well as being the smallest continent. (Back then, I never thought to ask where places like New Zealand fitted into this model). For a good twenty years or more, I absolutely took this fact to be one of the surest facts I knew. There are seven continents.

But Maybe There Are Just Five or Six Continents

I started having doubts when people in other countries asked me how Australia could be a continent (”It’s just a country, isn’t it?) and when many wanted to lump North America and South America into a single continent, “America”. It was hard to argue with their logic.

Now that I’ve spent some time teaching groups of people who all come from different parts of the world, I’ve seen the conflict that such a topic can provoke. Students from places like Brazil and Colombia, for example, always argue that America is a single continent (and they also differ from my old geography teachers on where North and South America would begin and end if they did, in fact, exist). A Russian student told me quite emphatically that Europe and Asia are actually one continent called Eurasia - also with impeccable logic because if you look on a map, they are clearly not separate landmasses, and Russia of course “belongs” to both.

And then there’s the Australia problem. Many of my students want to call this either Oceania or Australasia, so that a bunch of other otherwise continent-less countries in the Pacific can be included. Again, pretty difficult to argue with.

My Resolution: Avoid Discussing Continents

A few weeks ago I quietly slipped out of my classroom and left my twelve Colombian, Czech, Thai, Korean and Turkish students arguing about how many continents are in the world. It had come up quite unexpectedly, just because the word “continent” was in a reading task I’d set. But I still felt guiltily responsible. I let them fight it out amongst themselves for a while then came back and reiterated that there is no right answer.

There are lots of questions which have no right answer, but this is one of the less important ones. It doesn’t really make any difference how you count your continents, but I guess since it’s one of those facts that you learn as a small child, nobody wants to give up their point of view. But I give up! And I’ve put a ban in place on talking about continents in my classroom.

But I’m still curious: How many continents do you think there are? Let me know in the comments.