Aspire!

As well as having a passion for geography and the teaching of it, I am also extremely interested in the education of SEN students. For the last 2 years I have worked with an organisation called Take A Break which funds both youth groups and sessions for children with disabilities, special needs and terminal illness, subsequently giving their families some rest bite also. The ethos of Take A Break is to provide the children with access to fun and enjoyable activities within their local community, as well as to develop a skills base of social skills that they can apply in other aspects of their lives.

Having been lucky enough to have the chance to travel to Mumbai this summer, as part of my agenda I decided that whilst I was there I would visit and spend a short amount of time in one of their SEN schools. The school I visited on my trip was formerly called The Spastic Society of India, but it is now more commonly known as Aspire. 

The school currently has around 100 pupils that attend it daily. Their ages range from 2-22 and the students are grouped according to ability. In the higher ability classes the students have lessons in English, Maths, Science and other more creative subjects such as Art and Music. The less able students at the school take part in a more vocational programmes of study. They predominantly learn skills for trade and work but also for daily life and socialising. For example, the students are taught to cook and wash clothes. They are also taught work skills such as jewelry making – children spend hours putting beads onto pieces of thread and the work is differentiated by bead and thread size. Clearly this type of activity is extremely difficult for the students as it utilises fine motor skills, but if they are able to master it, it is a good skill for them to use for money and work. Similarly they are also taught how to hole punch paper and file work in folders. 

Many of the children that attend Aspire are from the local slum areas in and around Colabo. The school was originally set up primarily for SEN students but recently this has changed and they now take on main stream pupils too. As a result they currently have two full size classes of nursery children who come from the local slum area and will continue their education with the school. When speaking to members of staff and touring the school it is obvious of how much for a push for “inclusion” there is there. They are keen to have SEN students as part of not only main stream schools but the local society. This is something I found extremely refreshing and in all honesty not what I expected. When you consider this notion with where we are in Britain with SEN schooling, the idea of Inclusion is really progressive and encouraging to see here. 

In terms of staffing at the school there are many people working there. Firstly there are the ‘mothers’ who work behind the scenes at the school cooking fresh, hot dinners and keeping the place clean and tidy. Then there is one member of teaching staff per class who sometimes has a teaching assistant with them. There are a number of professionals at the school such as physiotherapists, children psychologists and behaviourlists. Many of the staff have trained in the UK and are very proud of their hard work and qualifications.

On the other hand the resources in the school were not as much of a privilege. Although the building is very colourful, clean and bright the resources are fairly limited. There is a wonderful sensory room and soft play area but the classrooms themselves are sometimes lacking. Sadly when practising skills such as hole-punching for example the students are often sharing one between at least ten. Additionally, many of the children with cerebral palsy are not able to afford splints and wheelchairs. The school does own one or two wheelchairs of its own but they are still very basic in nature and given to the most severe children.

Although money clearly holds back some of the progression in this school it does not take away from the positive work they really are achieving there. The set up is very similar to home  - if not, in my opinion,  more progressive in their aims and future targets. The staff make the most of what they have and prove to be very inventful when it comes to resources and activity ideas. Visiting this school was a real opportunity and there is so much I will take away from this opportunity and apply to my own teaching career. 

This slogan on the school's minibus really summed up my positive experience! 

Multicultural Mumbai!

This post takes me back to a post I published back in July. The post had discussed how when presented with a map of cultural areas you might well logically think that all those living within say the ‘Hindu region’ are of that religion, but how wrong you would be. Mumbai provides a fantastic case study illustrating this point for students.

Mumbai as a class case study

When it comes to religion in Mumbai the people here appear to be highly devout. Like other parts of India, Hinduism is the major religion observed by most residents in Mumbai. There is evidence of this religion almost everywhere you look, none more so than the statues of Ganesha that are currently slotted into every nook and cranny (we have visited Mumbai during the Ganesh Festival).

However, apart from Hinduism other religions are also practised here such as Islam, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity. Here are some encounters I have had with multicultural Mumbai:

After chatting to a Jain man on a walk down Marine Drive, he told us about his religion and gave us a list of Jain mosques to visit whilst in Mumbai. 

Here is one of the mosques he mentioned, it is called the Haji Ali Mosque and sits on a small island just off the coastline. 

We were also lucky enough to visit the christian cathedral of St Thomas.

Then finally we received a tour inside this beautiful church in the naval area of Mumbai. It is called the Afghan Church 

The interior of the Afghan Church. 

Slum Life

When wandering around and about Mumbai it is hard not to notice one thing, its vast slum areas. It is currently estimated that about half of the city’s swelling 12 million people live in what is referred to as “informal” housing. The largest slum in Mumbai is Dharvi. It was originally inhabited by fisher folk when the area was still creeks and swamps, but it then became attractive to the migrant workers of the South and beyond, when the swamps began to fill in through a combination of natural and artificial causes. The slum is estimated to home over one million people.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/05/dharavi-mumbai-slum/jacobson-text

The wrong approach

 Apart from coming to Mumbai as a tourist, this was just the type of environment I wanted to access and experience, namely for personal reasons but also as a powerful resource to use in my teaching. As someone who has been lucky enough to travel I have always tried to collect resources and interesting stories to bring home to the classroom and this was exactly what I planned to do in Mumbai... I had visions of bringing home hard hitting, powerful images that would definitely evoke to students just what slum life was like. How wrong my approach was!  

Surreal feelings

My first experience of a slum in Mumbai was a day in Colabo. We walked along a street and really just came across it by accident. As we walked past I managed to get a few photos which provided a window into the way of life and the living conditions there. However, what struck me the most (without trying to sound like a complete fool) was how the real life pictures I was now seeing, were the exact imagery that is shown on many TV programmes and films. I felt almost accustomed to it, like I had been there before. The scenes at times shocked and appalled me and of course tugged on my heart, several tears were also shed, but in some strange way that I  cannot describe I felt like I had seen this before and  it did not upset me as much as I expected.

When I came back home and thought about this I think I realised why. When looking at just a scene or a photo is becomes hard at times to really empathise with what life for the person really is like and how they feel and experience it. As a result, the next day, instead of going back and getting more photos I decided to just sit and watch for a short period of time. This time things were different. I became quickly fascinated by their way of life – several new things things came to the forefront of my mind, aside from the heart wrenching images you expect to see.

 There was electricity and water supplies in places; in the most basic forms of course but that was something I had not expected to see. Then the people themselves they didn’t look sad and broken - they were getting on with life, they smiled and shouted to us. Then at the sides of the roads people sat making things to sell out of what looked like most of the time as rubbish. They were genius and they were positive. This is what overwhelmed me the most. They did not sit in squalor feeling sorry for themselves. They got on with life and faced it. Some inhabitants even chose to stay there as it is what they call home, and  for generations their family have lived there.

 Teaching Resources with a twist

Having accepted that I had gone about “experiencing” a slum in all the wrong ways, I thought about how else I could introduce the topic to students. Here is what I came up with. The first resource was almost by accident. I was looking for an Indian children’s book to buy for a family member when I came across the book, ‘His Share of Sky’ by Rashmi Nazaray. It includes a selection of well written short stories that describe life for ten year old Barsau who lives “in poverty but is far from being poor” as he “learns the best from nature” and “revels in his own adventures”. The  book is inspiring, positive and thought provoking but also includes enough descriptive detail to still introduce to you how different the living condition of this boy’s slum are compared to anything we experience at home. It was perfect and it was sure to help students comprehend life in a slum in a much more expressive way than a still life photo.

The second activity I came up with struck me after reading a few stories in the book. Again I had been overwhelmed by the ingenuity of slum dwellers ability to make and produce something out of nothing. What better way to get students thinking in that mind set than provide them with random materials and rubbish and within a set amount of time produce something creative they could sell for small money. Other similar activities could be coming up with a basic shelter/house or putting together a meal from scraps.

Overall I learnt a valuable lesson here which is to think outside the box (or photo as it were!). 

A city of opposites...

When considering Geography itself I have always regarded it as a subject full of opposites. The most predominant of those is probably the contrast between physical and human geography, but other examples include rural/urban, erosion/deposition, pollution/recycling, plus many more.  

However, the topic of geography that has also fascinated me the most is the intricate relationship that develops between these areas of contrast. Take for instance people that chose to inhabitant areas of potential natural disaster as well as the boundary between where rural starts and urban ends.

Therefore, having been a topic that has always kept me spellbound, it comes to no surprise that the first thing I noticed when exploring Mumbai was that it really is a city of opposites. Everywhere you look you see a contrast of different worlds colliding and I have never been to a place where it is more apparent and overwhelming than Mumbai.  It is not just a case of two different things spotted in one place but it is the incredible proximity of such contrasting lives and environments operating so closely together. Below are a series of photos I have taken to try and illustrate some of the opposites that I have spotted so far:

Tropical/Urban - Mumbai is a sprawling urban centre with a tropical forest existing within it.
I have already had the privilege of seeing Flying Fox Bats, Black Kites and Parakeets flying above some of it's busiest roads. 

New/Old - Dilapidated ruins of buildings stand next to beautifully restored ones such as this new hospital along Marine Drive. 

Poor/Rich - The poorer area at the front of the photo is a huge outdoor laundry that washes the clothes of the city high fliers who work in the modern skyscrapers that dominate the skyline in the background. 

Modern/Traditional - Western food outlets are beginning to compete with the traditional Bombay food stalls that line the streets. 

Vibrant/Dull - For me it is the vibrancy of the culture and people in Mumbai that often adds a beauty to sometimes run down and tired looking buildings. 

Pollution/Recycling - Mumbai is full of cars and other motor vehicles and the air is often thick with pollution and fumes. However recycling in India is on a different scale, everything has another use to someone else and the streets first thing in the morning are often full of people carrying huge loads of collected plastic and glass.

Classroom Activity

A fun way to get students to compare opposites in geography is to present them with a series images on a projector that they can then discuss as a class as to what contrasts they think it shows. Or a more creative activity is to get the students themselves to think of opposites that feature in geographical topics; from this they can create images to represent the word opposites e.g. a coin for rich compared to a sheet of tarpaulin for poor, or a mountain for uplift and a river for vertical erosion. Once they have made their images on some paper or card (and not included the opposite word on it,) they must swap them with someone else to see if they can match together the opposite images and guess the words. 

The next morning...

After the initial culture shock we experienced when first landing in Mumbai, everything seemed much better the next morning! We decided to set off on a walk to take in the local area and get ourselves used to the heat and the high humidity (we had travelled to Mumbai at the tail end of the Monsoon season when really the recommended time to visit is between October and March when temperatures are much cooler with less humidity).

After walking around for only ten minutes we immediately began to see all the beautiful buildings and architecture that form the basis of the attractions that bring tourists to Mumbai.  Below are some photos I took of the most famous of these attractions; The Gateway of India, The Taj Mahal Palace and the Victoria Terminus Train Station:

The Gateway to India

The Victoria Terminus

Taj Mahal Palace

When thinking back to the tourism video of Mumbai I published, it is clear that the attractions are as incredibly striking as it shows, if not more. However, what it does not demonstrate to you is the experience you have as you locate from one attraction to the other. This is when you see the many faces of Mumbai all entangled into one. For instance, many of the other buildings in Mumbai are extremely dilapidated and falling into ruin, although they are inhabited by poorer members of the city who give the building some life, many of them still come across as lost in time. Secondly, the sheer number of people and traffic in and around the city’s suburbs make it difficult to take everything in around you. When you stop at a tourist attraction there is often a mad rush of people coming over to see you and request photos, or attempt conversation of where you are from. Similarly the noise of the traffic and the city can impose when trying to stand and reflect upon the amazing sights. As I tried to get over in my last blog, Mumbai is a sensory overload amongst some of the most spectacular sights you could imagine. For me personally this is part of travelling to new cultures that I love - being thrown into something completely new and having to take it in your stride – but comparing reality to a tourism video quickly shows you what parts the tourism board chose to include and why!

When walking around Mumbai you quickly become accustomed by people's curiosity to you. 

A more "behind the scenes" look of Mumbai perhaps...

On the other hand, when I think back to the news articles I read before leaving for Mumbai, unlike the tourism video, I find it very difficult to relate to them at all now that I am here. When walking around in Mumbai the people are very inspiring; they are incredibly friendly, willing to help and assist in accommodating almost any needs, and open about their own lifestyles and curiosity into ours. Just like most other places in the world, when walking around the streets of somewhere you don’t immediately see all the negative media articles that are in the news and as a result I most definitely don’t feel unsafe here, well no more than I would walking around London! Of course you have your wits about you at all time as to not put yourself in danger, but the negative face the news media can sometimes inadvertently give a culture is not one to always be trusted. 

After spending the last few blogs reflecting on what expectations I had of Mumbai based on various medias and now thinking about what it is like in reality, my next few blog posts will look deeper into what cultural experiences have hit me whilst out here. 

First Impressions

I arrived in Mumbai on 17^th August 2013. We touched down about half midnight and having jostled our way through numerous men trying to carry our cases for small tips, we had just under an hour’s drive to the apartment. This drive was to be extremely memorable and provide my very first impressions of Mumbai.

After having been in the car just short of five minutes our initial thoughts were, what the hell have we done? Let me explain why...

We came out into extremely high temperatures and rain, so much rain. The roads were like raging rivers in places. Aside from the fact that drivers in Mumbai rarely use the driving lanes (even on roads that are twice the size of a standard British motorway) there were dogs, goats and cows all patrolling the sides of roads if not walking down the middle of them. Cars weave in and out of the heavy traffic dodging each other with incredible accuracy and constant beeping of their horns! It was not just the traffic and the animals that surrounded us however, it was the people too. Mumbai seems to come alive at night and there is a real buzz of energy after dark. EVERYWHERE you look there are people – on tops of cars, in the backs of open lorries, piled into overloaded cars and mo-peds, under bridges, and selling from street stalls at the side of the road. Stepping off a plane into Mumbai is nothing short of a sensory overload, and we were completely and utterly overwhelmed.

Below are just some of the things my senses experienced on that first car journey through Mumbai:

Sight: bright lights, slums, skyscrapers, traffic (so much traffic), people, animals, snippets of greenery and palm trees.

Smell: India certainly has some overwhelming smells and they come in all shapes and sizes - street food, incense, sewage, stagnant water, and pollution (plus many many more!)

Touch: humidity, warm rain, sweat!!!

Taste: Many of the smells in Mumbai have the effect of “hitting the back of your throat”. They really are strong and something you probably haven’t experienced before. It is the smell and taste of Mumbai life which has taken me the longest to get used to even now on day ten.

Hear: street sellers shouting, crows calling, road works, car engines and the constant beeping of horns. I cannot express to you how often people sound their horn in Mumbai. From what I can make out it is to warn when you are about to crash into the side/back of them, they are used instead of indicators, to encourage traffic to pull off at traffic lights and just generally beeping when there is not a single other person on the stretch of road. You quickly become accustomed to the sound of horns all the time you are awake and asleep in India, they form the constant background noise.  

Hopefully the selection of photos and sensory descriptions above help paint a vivid picture of the cultural shock I got after stepping off the plane into Mumbai. I think there is a certain benefit to using the senses to describe either a situation or place as it makes a situation a lot more memorable and easier to recall. It is also a good cross-curricular skill for students to access as it helps them develop higher levels of thinking rather than describing purely what they see, they would need to imagine and empathise with an image or situation. To prompt students to use the senses I would provide them with a striking image on the board such as one of the photos above. They would then look at the image for a few minutes and it would be removed. From that I would encourage the student to describe in a diary format what they saw and what they think it would be like to walk down that street or sit in that area by using the senses. 

Media as a cultural representative...

This will be the final blog for the sub topic I have discussed surrounding ‘geography and the media’. It continues with a similar theme to my last post in that, as the nature of the media is to inform its audience, much of its content tends to be more negative highlighting recent happenings from around the world and therefore, as a result, the media can often also portray various cultures in a similar light.

News reports often show the damage litter can cause on beaches across the world. 

Holiday resorts in the news are often presented as rowdy, drunken getaways, not heritage and cultural hotspots.

Mumbai, India

At the start of my blog I mentioned that I would be travelling to Mumbai, India. Well that time is now almost here. I travel out to Mumbai in just two days and I am a complete mix bag of nerves and excitement mainly because I just don’t know what to expect. This got me thinking. What is it that gives us preconceived ideas of a place and its culture, and what role specifically does the media have on this?

Take for example if right now, this minute, I chose to look at the top five recent news reports on Mumbai. Well here they are:

1.       http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Oldest-dump-in-Mumbai-takes-greatest-toll-on-health/Article1-1107370.aspx. 

2.       http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/mumbai/18-000-students-in-Mumbai-s-aided-schools-don-t-have-teachers/Article1-1107375.aspx

3.       http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Close-shave-for-nine-kids-after-bus-rams-into-van/articleshow/21813790.cms

4.       http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Three-stuntboys-make-robbery-bid-on-train/articleshow/21813624.cms

5. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Two-sons-killed-stepfather-over-property-dispute/articleshow/21781767.cms 

From this impression, if I was to blank out all other knowledge I have of India I would currently be terrified of going to a city in a country where... there is a “huge waste dump affecting the health of the local people”, where children are poorly educated because there are “not enough teachers for the number of students”, where there has been a near car crash due to the poor driving of the people in the city. Add to this the fact that three boys have attempted to rob a train and two men have killed their own father in a recent property row. Scary stuff – right?

Well maybe so, but this is because if you do choose to use just one media type this is the probable view of a culture you will get – both negative and scary. As a result, to get a more holistic look our views on culture need to be shaped from one or more perspective. In that case then, let’s take another media type...a tourism video of Mumbai from Youtube:

So how has my opinion changed? Well the city looks like it is absolutely full of beautiful, boldly coloured architecture. It illustrates a vibrant culture of both past inhabitants such as the cave remains at Elephanta Island, amongst present daily rituals such as the vast outdoor city laundry at the Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat. After being presented with this type of imagery and scenes how could anyone resist going to experience this for themselves? Yet again this is the catch. This type of media is again biased as it’s predominant purpose is to demonstrate a culture or a place as exclusively positive and exciting as possible in order to encourage the many tourists that flock to Mumbai each year.  So perhaps somewhere in between these two cultural representative extremes lays the truth of what Mumbai is or could be like – this is something I will happily report back on once I have arrived in the city.

Elephants Island, South Mumbai

Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat, Mumbai

Classroom Activity

I think that it is really important to indicate to students early on in their education how various medias can be biased in what information they provide. That way when we encourage them to go away and research independently they can understand not only what they are reading but the quality of the source of information they have picked up. This is a really key skill for them to have particularly in the later years. To get students thinking at this level I would firstly change the classroom set up and seat students in groups around tables that represented a specific country. I would then produce a variety of sources giving information about the country – current news articles, a tourist clip or brochure, government statistics etc. I would expect the students to record key information after being given each source type and indicate in the chart whether this has persuaded or dissuaded them to visit a country and why. After this they could then write a short piece on which source gave them the strongest view of what they thought the culture would be like in that country and why that source specifically made them want to, or not want to visit the country or area. 

What the news doesn't tell us...

Although my last post illustrated how well covered geographical issues are in the media and what good it can provide, I think it is fair to say that there are a lot of the things the news doesn't tell us and students need to be aware of this.

Take for instance this news article that can be accessed via the link below:

http://reliefweb.int/report/china/china-gansu-earthquake-situation-report-no-2-23-july-2013

An example of the devastation caused. 

This image illustrates the location of the 2013 Chinese earthquake.

How many of you had actually realised that on the 22^nd July 2013 there was an earthquake in China killing around 94 people and injuring hundreds of others? I am guessing not many, I myself hadn't realised either. Why you might ask was there little to no coverage? Well if I was to tell you that this was the day prior to Kate Middleton going into labour with the Royal baby things might make more sense. Sometimes other stories just take precedent and as a result what we do hear in the news is often very selective. If another story will grab a wider audience regardless of the seriousness of the event being covered, it will get essentially get the headline!

A similar story can be presented when we consider the year 2010 – the year of the Haiti Earthquake that reached 7.0 on the Richter Scale, and killed hundreds of thousand of people. I am sure most of you and your classroom students will recognise this event from the extensive coverage in the news. However, how many of these other earthquakes provided by the US Geological Society can you recognise from the same year, 2010? 

A list of earthquakes for the year 2010. (Data: U.S. Geological Survey)

Location: Southern Qinghai, China
Magnitude: 6.9
Date: April 13, 2010

Location: Spain
Magnitude: 6.3
Date: April 11, 2010

Location: Solomon Islands
Magnitude: 6.8
Date: April 11, 2010

Location: Northern Sumatra, Indonesia
Magnitude: 7.7
Date: April 6, 2010

Location: Baja California, Mexico
Magnitude: 7.2
Date: April 4, 2010

Location: Greater Los Angeles Area, California
Magnitude: 4.4
Date: March 16, 2010

Location: Offshore Bio-Bio, Chile
Magnitude: 6.7
Date: March 16, 2010

Location: East Coast of Honshu, Japan
Magnitude: 6.5
Date: March 14, 2010

Location: Liberatador O Higgins, Chile
Magnitude: 6.9
Date: March 11, 2010

Location: Eastern Turkey
Magnitude: 6.1
Date: March 8, 2010

You might well ask the same question as before, why haven’t I heard of most of them? This provides evidence for my second point. A lot of what we see in the media is manipulated in that it is news someone has chosen to show us. There are several reasons that it might have been chosen; the scale of it is so big it is considered of global importance, or the consequences of the event might affect us directly (e.g. British deaths amongst the casualties) or indirectly (e.g. flight paths interrupted or trade links for example). Although this may seem an extremely pessimistic view to have, I believe it is a realistic one, and therefore important for students to realise that not all news can and will be presented to us. Getting students to look at lists of natural disasters from a distinctive year, such as 2010 with the Haiti Earthquake, can really open their eyes as to what they hear about from the media and what they don’t.

Finally the last point I have to make surrounding geography and the media is the somewhat negative light it can shed on the subject. A way to get students to think along these lines would be to set them an allocated time on a selected news website and ask them firstly to seek out some positive, geography- related articles. Then secondly for them to look for positive updates on devastating events such as the Japanese tsunami – often these types of events are heavily covered during the time of devastation but little coverage follows up on the long term rehabilitation processes.

Now I feel I have a more extensive view on the role of the media and geography I want to finish off in my next blog post by looking specifically at its role with representing culture...

Media and Culture!

My last two blog posts have focused on how cultural items such as literature and artwork can not only give us more detailed insights into geographical events such as societal collapse and changing climates, yet provide us with comprehensive ideas into what daily life was and is like amongst various cultures around the world. In light of this I now want to consider what relationship the media has firstly with the subject of geography in general, and then what role it plays towards cultural representation...

What is meant by the term ‘media’?

When we use the term ‘the media’ we are referring to means of communication such as radio, televisions, magasines, internet pages etc. The scope of these communication opportunities means that what is covered by the media therefore has the ability to influence people extremely widely.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/MEDIA) 

Geography and the media – what is their relationship?

The media is arguably an integral part of geographical study as it is the platform that the subject’s image is thrown into the public domain. The relationship between geography and the media is seen most clearly during times of natural disaster, like the extensive coverage of the Boxing Day Tsunami, The Haiti Earthquake etc. However, not to be overlooked are the portraits of places the media provides as backgrounds to its stories or even as features and programs themselves. 

(http://www.slideshare.net/wellarb/geography-and-the-media-strengthening-the-relationship)

To illustrate this presentation of geography in the news, take the three pictures below taken from the BBC News website surrounding coverage of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Firstly the images of the devastation clearly shock and engaged the audience showing them the scale of the geographical disaster involved, but secondly other attempts are made on the news to explain the geography behind how this earthquake actually happened. 

Classroom Activity Ideas

To begin a topic like this I would simply begin with a starter activity that encourages the students to collectively mind map all the types of media they are aware of. Questions could then be directed to get students discussing ideas such as which media they think is the most accessible to various age groups and why. Following this, to show them exactly how much geography is included as part of the media, I would find a range of website, newspaper, and magazine articles that cover a range of geographical topics from weather reports, natural disaster updates and reports, fact files on countries to travel to etc. I would scatter these resources around the classroom and get the students to feed back what types of geography topics they think are covered in the news and what they tell us as an audience. This way they will hopefully begin to see the scale of coverage the subject receives.

So far I have started to just simply think about the relationship the media has with geography. However in my next blog I now want to start considering whether this is a distinctly positive relationship, or if there is more to the story...

The Little Ice Age

What was the Little Ice Age?

The Little Ice Age is a period of time between about 1300 and 1870 during which Europe and North America were subjected to much colder winters than during the 20^th century. The period can be divided into two phases: the first began around 1300 and continued until the late 1400s, this was then punctuated by a slightly warmer period in the 1500s; after that the climate deteriorated substantially and the period between 1600 and 1800 is what marks the height of the Little Ice Age. 

So what caused this dramatic climate fluctuation?

The cause of the Little Ice age is largely unknown. Many people have however noted a coincidental low in sunspot activity as well as a possible reversal of the North Atlantic ocean current oscillation. The link below shows a documentary about the Little Ice Age of which some sections might prove successful in introducing the topic to students in the classroom:

More information on the facts and figures can be found at:

http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_lia.html

How can cultural evidence aid our understanding of the impacts surrounding the Little Ice Age?

There is a wealth of cultural items such as paintings, diary accounts and other literature that help depict the various impacts that The Little Ice Age had on Europe and North America. For instance many painters have produced paintings that encapsulate how the Little Ice Age caused much colder winter temperatures that frequently froze rivers and canals so deep that winter fairs and ice skating could be held on them e.g. the first Frost Fair held on the River Thames in 1607. 

The Frost Fair held on the River Thames. 

A frozen river during the height of the Little Ice Age

Ice Skating was popular on the frequently frozen rivers and canals. 

Iceland was one of the worst affected areas during the Little Ice Age with around a half of its population falling. Evidence shows that the farmers suffered a series of cereal crop failures and its livestock perished, subsequently pushing up grain prices to extremes. The Norse colonies in Greenland also suffered and eventually vanished as architectural evidence in the picture below demonstrates. Diary entries and written accounts also suggest that many places were hit by severe snowstorms such as one person’s account who writes, ‘snowfall was much heavier than recorded before, and the snow lay on the ground for many months’. Glaciers also advanced further than before as shown in the picture of the Shone Glacier below; the advance of such glaciers destroyed villages and farming areas in their path causing further devastation. Finally, accounts also suggest that sea ice advanced, it was particularly bad around Iceland where it became near impossible to bring a ship ashore.

Glaciers such as the Shone Glacier advanced destroying homes and farm land. 

Archaeological evidence shows the sudden disappearance of Norse colonies in Greenland who heavily relied on grain. 

Activity Idea

Overall I think the section above shows the wealth of cultural resources that can be analysed to look at geographical events such as the impact of the Little Ice Age on human populations. Furthermore I think the analysis of sources such as paintings and literature has a further advantage as it allows for students own interpretations of what the material is depicting, rather than being told by a teaching presentation or textbook. In light of this I came up with an activity that I think would work well in the classroom. 

Firstly it involves introducing students to a brief fact file of what happened in a geographical event such as the collapse of Mayan Civilisation or the Little Ice Age. To follow the students should then be given a series of sources such as diary entries, graphs, literature and art work that depicts many of the impacts that events, such as those mentioned, had. From this the students should then write a diary account of what they think happened during the event and what impacts they think it had from interpreting the sources independently. To differentiate other students could produce a story board instead. I think this would not only introduce students to a higher order skill of source analysis and interpretation, but also prove to be cross curricular with subjects such as literacy and history. 

The Collapse of the Mayan Civilisation

So far my blog has looked at various definitions and processes associated with cultural geography. I now want to slightly switch the focus of my blog and begin to explore how cultural items such as art work and literature can be used to not only understand geographical processes, but to appreciate past and present cultures themselves. In order to illustrate this point I have chosen to look at the collapse of the Mayan Civilisation.

So who exactly were the Mayans?

The Mayans created a civilisation in Mesoamerica, which was a large region that we now refer to as Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. The ancestors of the Mayans had previously led a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but by around 2000BC the civilisation had adopted agriculture as a way of life and heavy relied on it for their existence.  Many studies of Mayan society demonstrate its apparent complexity - particularly after 250AD where there is a marked rapid growth of a complex, stratified and prolific empire referred to as the ‘Classic Mayan Empire’. Their complexity is demonstrated by the development of trade networks that spanned Mesoamerica, expansive urban centres, the erection of intricate monumental stelae and strong advances in astronomy, mathematics and a written language. Yet, despite this, the Classic Mayan Empire seems to suddenly collapse at the peak of their cultural development between 750 and 900 A.D.

More information on the Mayans can be found at the following websites: 

http://www.localhistories.org/maya.html

http://authenticmaya.com/maya_art.htm

So why did their civilisation collapse?

There are two ways of looking at what might explain the collapse of the Classic Mayan Society. The first would be to analyse geographical data from the time. Many reasons for the collapse have been suggested, including overpopulation, deforestation, soil erosion, warfare and disease. However the most unambiguous evidence for their demise comes in the form of climate change. For instance, many sediment cores taken from lakes such as Lake Punta and the Cariaco Basin indicate distinctly dry periods that coincide with the collapse of the Mayan people. As a result, from the use of this first method of analysis, a broad consensus can be made that the presence of an abrupt shift in climate to more arid conditions was somehow responsible for the demise of the Mayan Civilisation (DeMenocal, 2001; Weiss and Bradley, 2001; Hodell, 2007). 

Whilst the first method of analysis has proven to be fairly conclusive, it is the second method that in my opinion gives a much more detailed account and therefore clearer depiction of what may have happened. The second method involves looking at existing cultural items from the time to build up a stronger picture of what society and daily life was really like. For example, archaeological remains, paintings and pottery all indicate the presence of a society that was highly reliant on agriculture. This was an agriculture that not only produced high yields of cereal but one that was heavily reliant on the use of a highly sophisticated irrigation system. Therefore the picture of the droughts now seems to make more sense in that if there was less rainfall, the crop harvests would have undoubtedly failed and the Mayan peoples starved, having devastating consequences. 

http://authenticmaya.com/maya_art.htm

http://www.lost-civilizations.net/mayan-art.html

 The websites above give a more detailed approach towards Mayan art and artefacts. Below is a series of items that show the high reliance on agriculture and irrigation in Mayan society:

Mayan Well

Mayan Aqueduct

Mayan Pottery

Overall, I think that by looking at the case of the Mayans it has made me realise that when teaching geography itself it is not only important to explore the topic of culture, but it is equally important to realise that cultural items such as art, literature and archaeology can also reinforce knowledge of geographical processes and events. I will look at this interrelationship further in my next blog that discusses The Little Ice Age and suggests a good activity in the classroom to exemplify this point to students. 

Below are the references of journal papers that I looked at to discover explanations of why the Mayan Civilisation collapsed, there are many more in this field that can easily be found online:

DeMenocal. P., 200. Cultural responses to climate change during the Holocene. SCIENCE. Volume: 292: Pages: 667-673.

Hodell. D., 2007. Climate and cultural history of the north-eastern Yucatan Peninsula, Quintana Roo, Mexico. CLIMATE CHANGE. Volume: 83. Pages 215-240. 

Weiss and Bradley., 2001. What drives societal collapse? SCIENCE. Volume: 291. Pages 609-610.