...some other bits

Categories: Geography General

I have been slow to respond to quite a lot of things I've been reading lately. One of the things which I enjoyed doing myself was from a suggestion by Tony Cassidy relating to Cultural Geography, something I did a little of way back in my university days. The basic idea was to collate a series of things which you associated with your teenage years from music, tv, food and drink etc. It was suggested that you could compare the cultural influences from different eras-Is there for instance, a British influence throughout your choices? I was interested to see how students choices compared to my choices (couldn't think of one defining book), and if the cultural influence had shifted. I trialled this in the middle of the double period with Higher as a cushion between what were two relatively note heavy sessions.

My first observation was how difficult the students found it to articulate their favourite things- I found this particularly odd since many admitted quite freely putting a host of personal likes/dislikes etc on their own myspace (or similar) pages. This reminded me of a post by Ewan McGregor, and of how much thought we put in to what we actually might publish online. The second striking thing was how little students knew about the origins of the things we consume-clothing, food etc-something that we have been trying to raise awareness of in the new s2 course. Finally, I noticed that, while most of my favourites from my teenage years had a British link, and most of Tony's had an American link, the cultural influences coming through in my students efforts were far more widepread. Is this an example of globalisation, with the world becoming a smaller place?

I really enjoyed the activity, and what was meant to be a period breaker turned out to have really nice geographical significance.. I'll try to put a sample of some of the students attempts here later, or maybe on the student blog. Many thanks to Tony for the idea.