With
our geography midterm/final this week, I spent my entire weekend studying. With
no time to explore any new Los Angeles region, I decided to use my final blog
post to evaluate another student’s blog post. While throughout my previous blog
review posts I have made a habit of choosing extremely well done blogs with a
very minimal weakness, allowing me to be constructive and critical, while still
being complimentary. Furthermore, these well-done blogs help to serve as a
template to improve my future blogs. For whatever reason, perhaps because this
is my final blog post, I decided to break this trend, and instead comment on a
blog that is far from stellar and seems, to some extent, incomplete. The blog details
the student’s trip to John Wooden High School in Reseda, a continuation school
for at risk youth, to teach creative writing. However, the blog post, which is
well written, and the visited location and motivation for visiting this
location, which is admirable, is well done, the student does not connect any
part of their trip to class concepts, nor does the student really delve in to
any real detail regarding their trip. Here is the comment left on the student’s
blog post:
Let
me start off by saying that I think it is very admirable that you volunteer at
a school for at risk high school students. Incidentally, I also love the fact
that you volunteer at John Wooden High School, which is oddly fitting for this
blog. That being said, I am not sure if you plan to adjust and edit your blog
posts at a later time or whether you plan to incorporate all your blog posts
into one central theme in a later post, but in any case, I think you would be
best served by adjusting your current blog style.
Firstly,
you should start by being a bit more descriptive about your trip, noting subtle
differences and nuances between the areas you pass through or between your
destination and somewhere you are more familiar with. Secondly, these posts
should reflect, in some way, the idea of social difference. I do feel that you
demonstrated this quality very well in this blog post, as you discussed ideas
of at-risk youth and continuation schools, but I believe that your efforts
would be best served by you delving directly into how these concepts relate to
social difference. Specifically, if Reseda is an area high in at-risk youth,
perhaps you could make some kind of connection between the city and the
socioeconomic factors at play within the city’s boundaries. That is to say, tie
in the class and racial distribution of the city, so the idea of at-risk youth
can be tied more directly into the larger umbrella of social difference.
Most
importantly, however, is tying your trip to class concepts, while I understand,
firsthand, how difficult it was to tie in concepts earlier in the year, due
simply to the lack of course material covered, we are at a stage in the quarter
where you should not only be able to observe class concepts during your trips, but
you should be able to reflect on previous trips and apply these class concepts
in a variety of ways. I will not delve into why this blog post does not seem to
incorporate any class concepts, but, rather, give you some suggestions of class
concepts that I have found highly visible throughout all of my trips.
Hopefully, by doing this, you will be able to reflect on and adjust your
previous posts before they are graded.
One of the most fundamental class
concepts that can be easily and directly observed is the idea of restricting
physical and social access to certain areas. This is often seen in high-income
areas, where the city has a greater desire to distance itself from, what David
Sibley would call, the “uncivilized other.” This can be seen specifically in a
city’s use of gated communities, lack of sidewalks or “bum-proof” benches.
Another concept that is easily seen is the idea of decentralization, or, more
specifically, multi-centralization. This can be easily seen not only through
the reliance on automobility and the lack of a centralized transportation
network, but also by highly specialized and differentiated “smaller centers.”
An obvious example of this would be the centralization of car dealerships in
certain cities. One final class concept that can be directly observed in nearly
any place in Los Angeles are the ideas of consumerism and, if you go to a
specifically affluent area, cosmopolitanism. These concepts can be seen in the
explosion of shopping centers in nearly every city.
Hopefully
these small suggestions and recommendations will make your blog posts both
easier and more fun. Good Luck!
No comments:
Post a Comment