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Introduction

'Archipelago' is Greek (ἀρχιπέλαγος) for 'chief sea' and originally referred to the Aegean Sea. The word was later interpreted to refer to the collection of about 6,000 islands that the sea includes. Currently, there is a long-running and complex dispute between Turkey and Greece about how national boundaries are to be drawn, who owns which island, and even the exact definition of an island.

Elsewhere, entire nations like Indonesia, Japan, and the Philippines are archipelagos. Were one to order archipelagos by descending number of islands one might obtain

65,666	East coast of Sweden
50117	Archipelago Sea of Finland
36,563	Canadian Arctic
18,306	Indonesia (perhaps as few as 17,508)
7,107	Philippines
6,852	Japan
6,289	Great Britain
3,515	Caribbean Sea (many countries)
1,980	Ha Long Bay Vietnam
1,192	Maldives

The Indonesian archipelago is over 3,200 miles wide (the distance from California to Bermuda), covers 741,000 square miles, and is home to almost 240 million people. It is also home to over 150 known volcanoes, of which 25 are currently active. Islands are built and destroyed. In addition, changes in sea level have submerged existing islands, and, in some cases, created two or more islands by isolating portions of an existing island. For 600,000 people world-wide since 2005, it does not matter if the island they, their family, relatives, friends and ancestors lived on was blasted as ash into the stratosphere, overwhelmed by lava and super-heated gases, inundated by a tsunami, or has slowly been made unlivable by rising saltwater.

It is impossible to return to where they were.

American students, teachers and parents face a similar crisis with the lives of 100 times as many people directly threatened AND the quality of life of billions of others at risk. The time for treating teachers and schools as islands has passed.