Tag Archives: Human Geography

Migration

Human Geography Migration Patterns: Brain Drain in the Poor World

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While listening to the radio a few days ago, I heard an interview with a doctor considered to be one of the top specialists in treating and researching blood cancers. He spoke about his cutting edge research, the gains that have been made against certain blood disorders and his hopes to someday find a cure for all blood cancers. I found this interview to be remarkable and had not realized how much progress has already been made in treating people with leukemia. This interview particularly caught my attention as one of my closest friends passed away due to non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at the age of 24.

While his medical research was clearly the most important thing that he spoke of, an off-hand comment was made about how the doctor had been highly interested in the World Cup, as he was originally from Uruguay. This immediately made me think of one of the critical concepts that we cover during the migration unit of human geography, brain drain. Brain drain is defined as the large scale immigration of talented people. These talented people will typically leave the poor world seeking job opportunities, wealth, and access to better support systems in their field of study.

While it is understandable for them to make the decision to leave their current situation and seek a better life in countries like the United States, there is a part of the conversation that is often neglected. What about the hole they left in their home country? Often these countries are lacking in their ability to provide medical attention to their people. If the top research universities in the rich world are poaching their best doctors, what will happen to the quality of treatment back home? The reality with brain drain is that the poor world’s loss becomes the rich world’s gain.

 

Population

Human Geography At Home: A Demographic Trend of One

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Human Geogrpahy Population Growth
When my daughter was born on July 16, 2014 she contributed to multiple population trends in the United States.

As a Human Geography teacher one of the main issues I must focus on throughout the course is population growth. We constantly look at population numbers and focus on the amount of resources that will be necessary to maintain an adequate standard of living. Some parts of the world have population growth they can sustain due to economic development, others located in the less developed countries can’t provide for the current population, much less a rapidly growing one. Today my focus on population growth is less about long term survival but more so about how one child can fit into the general patterns. The reason I’m focusing on this particular element is because my wife and I welcomed our third child into the world today.

Total fertility rate (TFR) is defined as the average number of children a woman will have during her childbearing years. The current TFR in the United States is 2.01, lower than what is considered the replacement rate of 2.1 to achieve zero population growth or when a population maintains itself at the current level. This being our third child my wife has exceeded the average and ever so slightly nudged our population growth rate upward. My newborn daughter also counts towards another statistic, the crude birth rate. Crude birth rate (CBR) is the number of children below the age of 1 out of the average 1000 people in a population, in the United States the current CBR is 13.42.

My daughter has also contributed to a significant demographic trend, the increasing minority population. My family background is Cuban and my wife’s family is of Colombian origin, making us part of the largest minority group in the country, Hispanics. In 2012 the Census Bureau put out a report stating that, for the first time in US history, white births accounted for less than half of all children born the previous year. This trend is only expected to accelerate in the future as the white population is on average significantly older than the Hispanic population.

As the proud parent of three beautiful and healthy children I see my family as a blessing that I cherish every day. At the same time, as a human geographer I must constantly remind myself to take a step back and analyze events, people, my family, and even myself in terms of the overall makeup of society.

Intro to Human Geography, Language

Human Geography: It’s OK to say “I Don’t Know”

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I recently started reading “Think Like a Freak,” the newest book co-authored by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. It is the third book in a series they started in 2005 with “Freakonomics” and followed up in 2009 with “Superfreakonomics.” For years I have raved to family, friends, my students, and just about anybody that would listen to me about the cutting edge thinking these gentlemen were sharing with the world. Their ultimate goal is to discover the hidden incentives that cause people to make decisions and unintended consequences that can happen as a result of what would normally be considered unrelated events.

One of the earliest chapters in their latest book focuses on the importance of three simple words: I DON’T KNOW. So often in life people will pretend to know an answer they simply don’t know, or can’t possibly know. What is their motivation? Are they afraid to admit weakness? If they are in a situation where they are surrounded by their professional peers are they more likely to “fake it?” The reality is admitting you don’t know something takes a great deal of strength and confidence. It shows that you are able to identify a shortcoming and hopefully are willing to engage it and remedy it. Continue reading Human Geography: It’s OK to say “I Don’t Know” →

Folk and Pop Culture

The World Cup: From Folk Culture to Globalization

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The World Cup is in full swing and it is, without a doubt, the biggest event on the planet. Billions of people will watch the international soccer (or football as most of the world calls it) tournament over the course of the next month. In the United States soccer is considered a second tier sport behind American football, basketball, and baseball. For years I have tried to explain to my students that while we in the US have paid little attention to soccer for most of our history, in the rest of the world it is far and away the most popular sport. For me personally, I was exposed to soccer at an early age, growing up in a Hispanic household ignoring soccer wasn’t really an option.

The question I get asked most often, why is soccer so popular in the rest of the world? It is simultaneously a complicated and simple question to answer. To better understand the question one must understand the origin of soccer as a folk tradition in England. Hundreds of years ago while excavating a historical site the head of a Danish soldier was discovered, what does one do when discovering the head of an invading soldier? They decided to kick the thing around, it later morphed into a game as two villages took turns kicking the head back and forth to each other. Thankfully, they eventually stopped kicking the head around and played the game with a ball, over the years rules and a playing field were established and soccer took on the form we are much more familiar with now. Continue reading The World Cup: From Folk Culture to Globalization →

Intro to Human Geography

What is Human Geography?

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New York
New York City Skyline. (Photo by Philipp Henzler, Courtesy of Unsplash.com)

People often look at me with a perplexed face when I tell them that I am a Human Geography teacher. They either think I am making students memorize lists of countries and states or I’ve even been asked if Human Geography is a science course where we study the human anatomy. I explain to them that Human Geography is trying to understand why the world is the way that it is. Our topics range from urban patterns in New York City, to farming techniques in Western Africa, East Asian fashion, the impact of humans on the physical environment, and just about anything and everything in between. To understand such a wide array of topics I teach my students that the world is highly organized, nothing is random, and that coincidences don’t exist.

Human Geography is an Advanced Placement® course, meaning my students take an exam created by the College Board® scored on a 5 point scale. The objective of students on this exam is to score at least a 3 and earn a college credit. The primary benefits of earning that college credit are: one less class to pay tuition for, one less class to have to prepare and study for once they reach college, one step closer to college graduation while still in high school, and lastly it is a critical building block for a solid college application. While my ultimate goal is to have my students better understand the world they live in, I am constantly pushing them to create the connections that make that knowledge applicable to passing the AP® Human Geography exam.

While the exam is challenging, only about half of test takers nationally score a 3 or higher each year, I have been able to help my students achieve a high level of success on the exam. Each year I have taught the class my students have been double digit percentage points above the national average. When compared to other students in our home state at the same grade level, my students have doubled the success rate of their peers. I have also privately tutored several students for this exam and I am quite proud to say that their success rate has been nearly 100%. If achieving this type of success on the AP® Human Geography exam, or just knowing more about the world around you sounds appealing, this site will be a valuable resource for you.