Of course the question has to be raised that even if history or geography pertains to one’s day to day existance does that make it essential in one’s life? My knowledge of the citric acid cycle, for example, is tragically muddled, yet this process is essential for human life. Just because it pertains to my day to day (or even minute to minute, in this case) existance doesn’t necessarily make it relevant to how I conduct myself.
I’m kind of amused by The Red Menace’s analogy, as I have a bachelor’s and master’s in Mechanical Engineering, as well as a minor in History.
But more to the OP, I would agree with the assertion of many here that our exposure to history and geography when we are young has a lot to do with our attitudes. The focus of grade school education is fairly limited and not really that interesting. I would attribute my great interest in these subjects to my exposure at home. My father is a huge history buff and most of our family vacations were to sites of historical interest. His presentation of this material in a more relevant and connected way made this material seem much more interesting. Not that this type of exposure would necessarily create a love of history and geography, but it certainly did more to spark my interest than 12 years of “Social Studies”.
-G
I remember watching an after-school special that was filmed in Canada… one of the casual ‘making it seem like a real highschool’ comments really struck me. It was one kid saying to another, I’ll help you with your Physics homework, if you’ll help me with Geography. And he was making a DEAL.
Geography and Physics are comparable? Not in the US, they aren’t! But elsewhere, where they didn’t kill the curricula, yeah, it is a lot more interesting and complex at an earlier level. (Most of my BA Geography classes cover things that people in other countries learn by high school!) Having listened to many a student, both as an undergrad taking the classes and a TA helping with the classes, YEAH, Geography is at least as hard for folks to understand, compared to the level it SHOULD be at (high-school physics). There are so many inter-related factors, pulling on anything from historical events to politics, economics, global weather patterns, material resources, social behavior, culture, and on and on and on… fascinating, but very complex. And the problems of analysis and mapping are pretty important, too. Hard, challenging, interesting… that’s how it should be taught.
Making it relevant is not as hard as it seems, I think. Though making it boring is REAL easy. But then, it is real easy to make physics boring, too.
I had one prof who was really good at catching even the ‘I’m here to fill a science requirement and this seemed easier than biology’ students. Partly, he found it interesting, and that rubbed off - but he also could walk the class through factor after factor from a particular point in time, and have it end up with something relevant to their daily lives. He’d pick silly little things, sometimes, like the availability of pizza to eat. How did it get here? What population moves were required, what culture did it stem from, what social and economic pressures caused the population moves, how did the global economy affect where they went, how did their crops affect what we expect to see on pizza, how did their climate affect those crop choices, how did other factors affect their culture, how does all that affect even something so simple as lunch? He did a good job of challenging people to think about anything from the perspective of ‘where did this come from, and how did it get here?’ He also pulled in history that had been just dates and locations, drew on music (how did the delta blues come about?) and other college interests (what alcohol do people drink an any region - bet you the source of it is their major crop!). He drew maps on the board, showing relationships from one thing to the next, both physically and in other ways. Once he had people hooked, he’d start exploring more ‘traditional’ Human Geography topics, like the causes of immigration, development of cities and colonies, economic patterns, and so forth. Major cool shit. Too bad the guy didn’t understand how to grade… sigh.
And using it daily? I use it, and while I have an MA in Geography, I work as a technical writer in the pharma and life-sciences industry. I use it for audience analysis for software guides and online help (global companies), and for design, drawing on what I know of cultures, human behavior, perception, and so forth (all learned in Grad School). Other real basic uses include mapping out sales areas (who buys what, where?), any kind of polling analysis (who feels what, where?), resource analysis and assessment, urban design and planning, utilities planning, implementation of any kind of public program, from healthcare to police coverage, and on and on. Anything you can map, either physically or conceptually, qualifies; better if you can cross-map multiple factors and get some real analysis. And that’s just basic stuff - understanding ‘how we got here from there’ is a problem of Geography, drawing on every other field, from hard science/technology, to sociology, history, economics, climatology… I also use it when talking about current events, all the time, and also just about LIFE, relationships, family… it applies all over the place.
Necessary to feed yourself? Maybe not. But I know I feel a lot more comfortable in the world, WTC/terrorism included, having a grasp of what drives the events that affect my daily life. Maybe many people would rather think it is an X --> Y world, but that doesn’t seem to solve anything, does it? Knowing that umpteen factors create pressures that lead to any outcome means that there are multiple ways to affect a situation, and that perhaps there are more choices and options and approaches to consider than just the big hammer version. And that means that I, myself, can make a difference, even if a small one, because it isn’t just up to those in power to make some huge singular move, nor am I stuck waiting for some cosmic event to occur. I prefer living ‘here’, rather than living under the assumption that I cannot make a difference because only one factor is involved. And that affects my daily life in a very fundamental way. Most people probably don’t think of that as ‘Geography’ but that’s what it is.
Now, if only we can start TEACHING it like that… I’m sick of people saying “WOW, you can actually get an MA in Geography? What, do you have to memorize where everything is, or something?” :rolleyes:
Don’t know if this is true or not, but I remember reading that Albert Einstein was interested in geography and considered getting a degree in it. However, he found that it was too difficult so he opted for physics.
hedra,
Nice commentary - I like to think that I teach geography to my students in a way that makes it interesting and impress upon them the relevance of thinking geographically - thinking about and understanding the myriad elements that are involved in the patterns we see throughout the world.
I wonder if the policy-makers who deemphasized history and geography in school are the same ones who stand around and look confused when some current event bubbles up out of said history and geography and gives society a whack on the head? I’m sure I don’t need to give any examples this month.
Seriously though, I’m Canadian, and I don’t remember getting much history and geography in public/high school. I hope they’ve toughened it up after I went through. If you USAers are getting less than I did, that’s disturbing indeed.
Though we did have an interesting course called ‘History of Revolutions’ in grade 10. I took it because it sounded subversive and cool, but I ended up being really interested: we studied revolutions in general, typical signs that a revolution may be imminent, and sample revolutions such as the French, American, Russian, and Chinese.
This was right around the time that Boney M. released their song Rasputin (1977/1978–so I’m dating myself!), and I tought, “Cool! A song about our history course!” It was also just after Mao Zedong died, and the Gang of Four led by his wife was running China. Scary. I could really feel the relevance of our readings about the Long March. Studying the Chinese Revolutions also explained why so many towns in Canada have a Bethune Street…
During that course I connected History and Geography to Here and Now, and that’s something I’ve never forgotten.
Thanks, Mr Esler, wherever you may be. You sparked my interest. And as a result I’ve worn the cover off my Penguin History of the World (bought voluntarily).
And it’s not like these things don’t come in handy in the real world - just ask people who don’t know New Mexico is a state. :rolleyes:
Esprix
Regular people don’t need history and geography. That’s what we have politicians, advocacy journalists, and smug sons of bitchs for.
(slight hijack)
IIRC, from my ‘intro to geography’ seminar (prep for the grad degree program), the geography programs got killed in the US after a bunch of geographers started going bad places, research-wise. There were a bunch of them who were studying environmental determinism, trying to prove that, say, people of mediteranean heritage were inherintly lazy, and africans were inherintly stupid, because of the geographic locations in which they ‘developed’. (Italy is hot, people take naps mid-day, therefore they are lazy because of the climate…) Not so thinly veiled racism running rampant.
Harvard, rather than be tarred by association with such atrocious research, canned their entire Geography program. A tad severe, but an appropriate sentiment, IMHO. Other universities rapidly followed suit. That meant that there were no teachers learning Geography, other than what they got in bits from related classes. Physical geography got salvaged in the form of meteorology, climatology, and some of the landform/planetary sciences (those ended up pushed over to geology, etc.), and and the technical side got salvaged in cartography (sometimes under civil engineering). But that’s all that was available in US colleges on ‘Geography’… so that’s what a few generations of teachers were taught. I don’t remember when the Geography depts were resurrected, but it wasn’t all that long ago for some places! (Note, ALL of the professors of Human Geography in my program were immigrants from Europe or elsewhere, or were very young.)
(end hijack, and segue to relevant content)
Geography as I learned it in grade school was weather, mapping physical features of the planet, and locations of places, just what was available to my teachers in college. Most of the policy makers currently around learned exactly the same thing - and hey, that’s pretty useless info, right, compared to other stuff? Geography can get dumped pretty easily under those conditions.
Fortunately, our local university Geography dept is deeply involved in educating K-12 teachers on what it REALLY is about… I was pleased to note that my son’s preschool class is learning basic concepts in cultural and human geography, not just where the continents are located!
Good question, and the answer is “yes”. Unlike the citric acid cycle (whatever the hell that is :D), citizens in a democracy can and do affect current events - through elections, through public opinion polls, through choices made when shopping, etc. - whether they realize they are affecting current events, and how, or not. Thus, it behooves them to be aware of how their choices affect current events, and there knowledge of history and geography comes into play.
Sua
Likewise, when I was in school (just a couple of years ahead of hedra, but different state), Cultural Geography was the best that was offered, and my school district was considered academically very advanced, including offering college-level calculus. So, the best we could get was a warmed-over world history. We had some very bright teachers, who tried some innovative stuff (world-wide Diplomacy in the classroom. Whooot!), but it still lacked focus.
It’s no wonder so many Americans have no idea why we should care about the Middle East, or Africa, or Asia. Hell, my wife, who has been to the UAE and Bahrain, has a hard time grasping the importance of these areas, and she’s no dummy! Until we get some decent geography classes in place, America will continue to be clueless about the world, and everyone, America and the world included, will be sorry for it.
I would venture to say that many Americans suffer an inferiority complex when they see prominent Europeans on TV speaking English so well that they almost sound British. But we should bear in mind that these people whom we see are usually top-flight scholars, members of the national government, and top-echelon international executives or entrepreneurs. As such they represent only a tiny minority within the general population. I imagine that the run-of-the-mill citizen of France or Germany probably does know more about other countries than we do, and almost certainly knows more foreign languages than we do, but it would be wrong to assume that they are all capable of reading a novel in English or watching a movie without subtitles.
During the year I lived as a university exchange student in Germany, I decided to try an experiment and see how well I could get through the day speaking English. Not in class, of course, or with my German friends, but just around town, running errands, asking directions and the like. Speaking to shop employees, bus drivers, and others who we would think of as “just average Joes”, I found that hardly any of them had any real grasp of the English language.