GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

“As attacks against foreigners and their businesses rage on, killing at least six people this week, other nations in the continent are scrambling to evacuate their citizens from South Africa. But this is not the first time xenophobic violence has exploded in a country that tries to portray itself as a diverse ‘rainbow’ nation.

What triggered this week’s attacks? They started after Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini said at a recent gathering that foreigners ‘should pack their bags and go’ because they are taking jobs from citizens, local media reported. Shortly after his comments, violence against immigrants erupted in the port city of Durban.”

Tags: South Africa, Africa, conflict, racism, ethnicity, migration.

Source: edition.cnn.com

“Despite predictions that religion will go the way of dinosaurs, the size of almost every major faith — sorry, Buddhists — will increase in the next 40 years, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. The biggest winners, Pew predicts, will be Islam and Christianity.”

Source: www.cnn.com

Untrammeled oases beckon, once-avoided destinations become must-sees, and familiar cities offer new reasons to visit.

Source: www.nytimes.com

Most geographers have more than a little bit of wanderlust.  Maybe we don’t all have the pocketbook for it, but so many people have the desire to explore, travel and see parts of the world that feel as if they are mythical.  For students that have the curiosity, it our mission as educators to cultivate that and help them frame the world into a geographic perspective.  I’ve always felt that window-seat flyers are have the seed of a geographer embedded within them…let’s make sure those seeds can grow. 

Tags: place, tourism.

“An overarching issue that is essential for understanding many pressing events of the day is the fraying standard geopolitical model of the world. This taken-for-granted model posits mutually recognized sovereign states as the fundamental building blocks of the global order. Many of these basic units, however, are highly fragile and a number have collapsed altogether. As a result, the next several posts will consider, and critique, the conventional state-based vision of the world. I am skeptical of the standard ‘nation-state’ model of global politics, as I think that it conceals as much as it reveals about current-day geopolitical realities. This model, evident on any world political map, rests on the idea that that the terrestrial world is divided into a set number of theoretically equivalent sovereign states.”

Tags: political, states, unit 4 political, geopolitics.

Source: www.geocurrents.info

An atlas of 592,130 trees right down to trunk size.

Though New York can sometimes seem like a drab warren of chain-link fence and oily pavement, the city actually has an impressive number of trees. On the streets alone—not counting private properties and parks—there were 592,130 at last reckoning, a leafy explosion you can now peruse in this great visualization of tree species.

Source: www.citylab.com

Satellite images show China is making progress on building an airstrip on a reef in disputed territory in the South China Sea, a report says.

Source: www.bbc.com

So that’s what they are up to…hmmmm.

Questions to Ponder:  Why is China building up this island?  What advantage would that give them?  Why aren’t other countries with competing claims stopping China?

Tags: borders, political, conflict, water, China, East Asia.

“The state transportation authority relies on federal guidelines that outline what it can put on signs, and these rules say signs must use only ‘standard English characters, so when we replaced the sign, we didn’t put the umlaut in.’  On Wednesday, the state’s governor put his foot down: The dots were coming back.”

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

The cultural landscape isn’t just passively ‘there.’  It is purposefully created, defended, protected and resisted by national, regional and local actors.  This example might seem laughable to the national media, but this was a serious matter to those locally that pride themselves on the town’s Swedish heritage.  Many want to preserve it’s distinctively Swedish characteristics as a part of it’s sense of place, but also it’s economic strategy to appeal to tourists. 

Tags: place, language, toponyms, culture, tourism, English, landscape.

“A founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, standup comic Maz Jobrani riffs on the challenges and conflicts of being Iranian-American — ‘like, part of me thinks I should have a nuclear program; the other part thinks I can’t be trusted …'”

Source: www.youtube.com

This comedian doesn’t just get laughs; he uses stand-up as a platform for discussing important social issues and to foster greater cultural understanding.  His big goal is to break stereotypical perspectives of Muslims and Middle Easterners by showing that “there are good people everywhere.”  Here is another of his entertaining and educational TED talks.  

Tags: Middle East, TED, globalization, culture, Islam.

“For most of the world, the Armenian Genocide is the slaughter you know next to nothing about. But every year on April 24, Genocide Remembrance Day, we Armenians remember the injustice of a crime that is rarely acknowledged and often flatly denied. It was April 24, 1915, when the Armenian intellectuals, professionals, editors and religious leaders in Constantinople were rounded up by the Ottoman authorities — and almost all of them executed. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire killed three of every four of its Armenian citizens. The majority of Armenians alive today are descendants of the few survivors.”

Source: www.genocide-museum.am