Burma, SE Asia and E Asia

Hey, this is the final week of the summer term. Bear with the Valley's heat and complete your work first. You can always play later :-)

One of the difficulties in teaching any course is to keep in mind that the material will be old to the teacher but is new to the student. And, therefore, for the teacher to "see" it with the eyes of a freshie to the subject. As Therese Huston writes in this essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education,

[Being] an expert can get in the way of seeing the issues from a student's perspective. The beauty of being a content novice is that you have an outsider's level of excitement and curiosity. Questions that might be demeaning to experts are enticing to content novices, just as they'll be enticing to your students —who will be more interested in learning because you've asked the right questions from the start.

I find this an interesting and enjoyable challenge, particularly in GEOG 310 and 410. If at all, I find that students do not ask enough questions because, I suspect, they think their questions might make them come across as not knowing enough about the world. In my "regular" classes I always comment that if they already knew the stuff, well, I will then be out of a job--at least this is my attempt at humor to convince them to shed that baseless fear.

In this class, whether it worked out well or not, I decided not to have any discussion-questions at all. It kind of made our class a quiet class, I suppose. I will assume that the quietness had nothing to do with your reservations to ask questions, or comment.

A few quick comments on the regions we covered through Mapwork 3:

• I don't care what the world says; almost always I refer to the country as Burma and not as Myanmar. It is my own way of protesting against the junta that has literally and figuratively choked the lives of many, many Burmese. Let a democratically government change the name, and I too shall refer to the country as Myanmar :-)
• Burma, like many of the countries in SE Asia and South Asia experiences monsoon rains. The monsoon rains are a lot different from the rains in the Willamette Valley. They come down in a hurry sometimes, dumping inches in a matter of hours.
• East Asia has its own "typhoons" that can cause quite a hassle. As we head towards the eastern edges of SE and E Asia, we also begin to experience the Pacific Ring of Fire. (I suppose it is an oxymoron, given that "pacific" means peaceful!)
• Demographically speaking, these two regions together account for more than a quarter of the world's population.
• And there is a tremendous diversity in the population. BTW, I found it confusing when I first got to the US whenever people referred to "Asians" in conversations in a way that excluded me from India, which is in Asia. I cannot understand how in the US the usage "Asians" refers only to people from China, Japan, etc., when technically speaking even an Iranian or a Nepali is equally an Asian. Oh well, can't correct 'em all! for the record, after having grown up in Asia, I have been an American for a while now :-)
  
• Anyway, speaking of diversity, you noticed the differences even within Burma. Our own Dr. Mark Girod recently spent a couple of weeks working in refugee camps that serve the Karen people in the Thai/Burma border. Chat with him if you want a personal take on this issue. If you are like me, you will be all the more convinced that life in the US is simply way too good.
  
• In a way, it is perhaps incorrect to include Japan in this whole mix because of the economic powerhouse it is in contemporary times. One of the many problems with the traditional approach to regional geography.
  
• My own assessment is that by and large, the future of the world will be most significantly shaped by what happens in Asia--Southwest Asia, South Asia, South East Asia, and East Asia. If it turns out otherwise, come back for a tuition refund in 2029 :-)

Any rejoinders, questions, comments?