As I write this blog post on the 19th April, I enter 4th week of my final quarter here at UCLA. My focus for this post is the class I was most excited when I initially looked at the courses before arriving. Anyone who knows me well will know I have a fond interest in South America, be it on cultural, historical, economic or political levels. My interest with this region of the world is also very much engrained in its wonderful physical geography, the many different landscapes that are found, be it in the Andes where some of the most rich indigenous cultures can still be found (D’Altroy, 2003) or in the low lying Amazon rainforest which also contains a wealth of indigenous cultures, but more so in biodiversity and natural resources. Humid Tropics, feeds my interest in South Americas physical geography, looking at various aspects of physical geography just North and just South of the equator. Despite this, I have been very surprised with the content taught so far in this class. Religiously using the Indo-Pacific Coral Reef field guide (Allen and Steen, 1998), the first 3 weeks of classes have entailed simply learning the fauna and flora of coral reefs found distributed in the warm shallow waters of the tropics (Allen and Steen, 1998). The forms of assessment appear straightforward, the midterm consists of simply identifying the group that a certain set of selected fishes and coral plants and invertebrates belong to. In addition to this, our professor made obligatory a trip to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. This class has made clear some further differences between how geography is taught in the UK and US. It is very unlikely that any module in the UK would commit so much time to something rather specific and what I would consider unnecessary knowledge. I believe this is what frustrates me most about this class; the content thus far has not given me any foundation to apply it to the real world other than aiding my ability to identify fish when visiting an aquarium. On top of this, the class of 250 people is a hybrid of students from various majors (subject areas), as a result a large majority of the class do not have any background in geography, leading the Professor to spend the first class teaching basic concepts such as the ITCZ. For any Geographer this is frustrating, as at 3rd year degree level concepts like this should no longer need covering.
A fundamental flaw in the American educational system in my opinion is the cause of this. In previous posts I have alluded to the immense flexibility in studying classes from different departments. For example, this quarter I am studying a communication studies class and the previous two I took Spanish classes. This has advantages as one is allowed to broaden the knowledge they acquire and pursue knowledge in areas covered by other departments. However, the fundamental disadvantage, and what is currently reducing this class to insignificance, is that people choose easy classes from different departments with only one interest, to get the highest GPA they can possibly achieve. Grade inflation in the US has been a severe problem as mentioned by students I’ve spoke to and from the reading I’ve done before publishing this post. Grade inflation has led to competition for the very highest grades, so high that students no longer see the advantages in taking classes that interest them but instead enrol in the easiest classes from a variety of departments (that the US system allows) in order to attain 4.0 GPAs (Sabot and Wakeman-Linn, 1991). I’m not being cynical when I say this, as it is well known by most here the particular classes in different departments that are ‘easy A’s’, and those that are likely to have the least workload. This could also be a mentality that is brought on by the high intensity and faced paced nature of the quarterly system here at UCLA, but it is something that I definitely deem a flaw and one that is not really an issue based on my academic experience at UCL. It is important to note however that grade inflation is indeed a national problem in the US, but it’s also a problem internationally and is not uniform in its extent (Johnson, 2003).
Despite all this, the class has given me an incentive to visit the exciting Aquarium of the Pacific next weekend. My following post will be published in two weeks, offering more reflections on geography taught in the US and UK, further updating on my activities this side of the Atlantic.
Allen, G. R. and R. Steene (1998) Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide, Sea Challengers.
D'Altroy, N. T. (2003) The Incas, London: Blackwell Publishing.
Johnson, V. E. (2003) Grade inflation: a crisis in college education, New York: Springer
Sabot, R. and J. Wakeman-Linn (1991) ‘Grade inflation and Course Choice,’ The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5 (1), 159-170.
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