Reflection Project 2

As I briefly discussed in my summary, in terms of cultural geography you need to be able to have an open mind, be objective in your research and most importantly if you are doing research you need to go out into the field and be hands on. If you are able to use all these effectively you will be able to conduct research in the proper way, so you can inform others on the findings you have made. The cool thing about cultural geography is that there is so many cultures and people on planet earth there is seemingly an endless amount of research that is needed. The more research presented will be welcomed as long as it has sufficient backing. It is exciting to cultural geographers we come to find out more knowledge about human beings in relation to the environment. Information gained in this sphere is to help further knowledge so we can understand the world around us better, while also understanding the differences in cultures and the history on why the human cultural world is shaped the way it is today. The ways in which cultural geographers can help us better understand the world around us will hopefully give insight to those in the future to deal with the problems that we are currently facing in our society today. Cultural misunderstanding is a huge problem in todays society, when you have so many wars and conflicts based out of not understanding someones background. When you look at race relations in America or religious ones in Africa it all stems from a lack of understanding and also not willing to try to understand. This comes from both sides. Not to say that if everyone took a cultural geography class everyone would understand, but if the school system started in elementary schools started to teach cultural geography (especially here in America) maybe kids would not be as ignorant or so unworldly. The information I have learned here in college I take so dearly because I feel like I have really opened my worldview up and understanding of the world. I would say that this is privileged, because most kids do not have to take any classes that associate with cultural geography. From talking to the many people people about my major I have only met one person who has actually understood what I study. This information discourse should not only be limited to those of who are in the field currently. It would be really nice to see this field get brought into the mainstream audience. So having it start out academic but then by using it in grade school hopefully would turn this knowledge into more public. And after a few decades of being public it would turn into social/commutative knowledge which would affect those personally. If it becomes public knowledge I would have a better hope that things such as social and climatic problems would be taken more seriously and more kids would want to go into these types of fields, because they are going to continue to be a serious problem in the future.