Trivia Guy

From Global Politician :

Americans treat geography as a spelling bee–trivia to be memorized and repeated on demand with no analytical power. The key question of Why are things where they are? remains unasked. Knowing geographical facts such as that the Himalayas and Andes are the highest mountain chains in the world contributes no understanding of plate tectonics and the resultant effects on climate, and the impact on human settlement for the people who live on opposite sides of these great mountains. The reluctance to incorporate and classify many facts into relevant explanatory factors contributes to the naive and wholly wrong idea that geography cannot be a science because it deals only with “unique” places.

There is, however, another level of geographic knowledge which is particularly rewarding but seldom communicated to the average pupil–places are not only different, they are similar: It is not by chance that the coasts of Norway and Chile in opposite hemispheres but similar latitudes resemble each other with deep fjords and beautiful glaciers, or that rent, property value and intensity of land use decline from the city center towards the periphery all over the world.

Nothing can be understood apart from the place where it occurs. No event, situation, problem in nature or human history has much meaning until it is examined against its geographical background. Geography studies the location, extent, distribution, frequency and interaction of all significant elements of the human and physical environment on the earth’s surface.

Geography is important!   Don’t end up like Miss Teen South Carolina!