12/2/2009
Human Geography, what comes to your mind when you hear these two words? I know what came to mine, memorizing countless maps and countries for no purpose other than getting a grade and to later forget as the class came to an end. Well I must say I was severly mistaken. This class has caught me off gaurd from the very start. I haven't sat in a classroom and learned useless knowledge that could be looked up in a blink of an eye on the internet, but instead I've learned to think and use my mind. This class isn't just about learning what the capital of Iraq is, which is baghdad by the way, it is about so much more. It is about learning to use your brain for more than memorizing but, to use it for problem solving and to become a better critical thinker and to become a more innovative person in general. Dr. Sherer is approaching us with problems of the world such as HIV/AIDS in Africa or severe lack of innovative minds here in America and making us use our minds to come up with ways to solve these problems.
One of the first problems we were approached with in this class was that America is currently ranked 40 in the world for innovation. This can mostly be attributed to our education system. Yes, when we started the public school system it was a great idea and it worked for many years, but we have become to content with our learning and that has caused us to fall severly behind. We stopped striving to make it better and started just mainting what was put into place and as with any other thing in life you must constantly be striving for the best or you will become stagnant and eventually die or fall behind. This may sound like something a greedy person would say, but shouldn't we be greedy for knowledge? Shouldn't we always be striving to learn more and become better people? Or should we remain on this course and see where we are at in 50 years? I personally prefer the first.
Another excellent part of this class is the fact that we are two days in and have had two guest speakers. I personally believe guest speakers are great to give you another perspective on things and to help the class interested and engaged. First, Coach Morris came in and spoke to us about soccer and globalization and how they coincide. He told us about how intense and hateful the fans at soccer matches are towrds each other; then told us how most of these people work together and are friends with each other every other day of the week, which I personally found interesting. It brought to mind many thoughts, such as, why do these people treat each other this way? is it traditions? is it deeply rooted hate and racism? or is it just a game that people get drunk at and say things because everyone else is? Next we had Dr. Pillay come and speak to us. He came in and really tackeled a lot of issues in a short amount of time. He addressed everything from the AIDS crisis to political unrest to the bright future that Africa faces through many of the things they have set up. Things like the African Union who have started working on a millennium project which is tackling issues like education, health, and economy.
All in all this class has definitly surprised me. I went in expecting one thing and got something completely different and I am very happy about it. We are only two days in and it has already tackled some interesting topics, I am excited to see what we will take on next.
Posted at 11:00 PM by Josh Seifert