Another Dream Achieved

First of all, I am so sorry for not being here for quite some time, I had a series of bad luck in my health in the past two months, which includes, well a strain of this pandemic. But I have recovered by the end of last month, still struggling with fatigue that it left my body but all is better now.

When I was in high school, even if my parents will not allow me because I was entering college very young, I still took the entrance exam for the University of the Philippines. It is the most prestigious university in the country because it is very hard to get in as the screening process is very tight. It is the country's topmost state university so a lot of students fight for a spot to be one of the "iskolar ng bayan" or Scholars of the Nation.

Long story short, my UPG or university projected grade failed me to get a spot on my two campus choices. There are a few more campuses that will consider my UPG score though they are quite far and my parents will just not let me (or I even I think I can't live that far) because I was just 15.

I accepted my fate and taught to myself that my dream was over. The dream that someday I will have a portrait of me taken with the "Sablay", UP's official costume that replaced the usual black toga and mortarboard which is used during college commencements in the country.

Decades passed and I still find myself editing my photos into UP "sablay" photos of random people just to make it seem like my dream came true even on a photo (I still have that fake photo HAHA) Fast forward to my 27th birthday, I had this conversation with Ate Carm and what she said struck me, "Everything ends and begins with a solid desire. Be clear on what you want then push yourself towards that direction". So I tried again, this time for Grad School, got accepted. It was a challenge to work full time and study at the same time but I am lucky to have the best manager in the world, Miss Sheryl, who was very encouraging. 

And with God's grace and all the support, there it is. Not fake or photoshopped, Real and True! My University of the Philippines Graduation Photo. And yes, it even came with a degree. Too bad it will just be an online Graduation this December due to COVID, but still looking forward to it!

Never EVER stop Dreaming!

Stevenson

Geographical Thinking

Geographical Thinking

Stevenson M. Que

Department of Social Studies Education, Faculty of Education

University of the Philippines – Open University, Los Banos, Laguna

Fort Nuestra Señora dela Soledad, Guam

As we move around this planet from point A to point B, we recognize and see that not only are the coordinates where we are standing at changes. People, plants, wildlife, language, and a lot more about the world unveils its diversity right in front of you. Thinking Geographically empowers us to learn not just the differences but also the relationship of all things, living and non-living, with each other no matter how displaced they are in the world that we live in. Travelling one thousand miles westward or eastward will not change your views as compared to traveling a few hundred miles north or south from your current location. How can we explain such phenomena to ourselves? Geography.

Almost everything about the world with respect to places, location, and the environment can be understood and explained by geographical thinking. People sometimes associate Geography with just the topographical make-up of a place or region but really, it is more than that. Geography tackles the differences and presents them in a way that people can distinguish the life and environment that a place is made up of based on how it is displaced near or far apart from another. Just like the scientific method that is being used by scientists to experiment and find solutions, geography as a social science also follows the same steps of observation and data collection, data analysis, and display and presentation techniques but revolves around a central element: space (ESRI Schools and Libraries Program, 2003).

Thinking geographically for me is having that sense to analyze problems about almost anything in the world with respect to how the environment, location, and all the life that exist within its vicinity has a direct effect to whatever the problem is. Geographical thinking can provide concrete conclusions as to why the behavior of a certain tribe is viewed as a taboo on another culture. Anthropologists can best explain such cultural questions and inquiries but having a geographical standpoint on thing can empower their analysis in formulating an answer to normative questions as such. Another example I can give would be in the field of economics. On one of the books I read entitled “Why Nations Fail?” by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012), a good comparison that was discussed was the case of two cities Nogales, Arizona in the USA and Nogales, Sonora in Mexico. Explaining the wide gap between two cities, or we can say a city divided by history into two, having an understanding of the ways how a place can be different even if they are directly adjacent to each other would give you the idea how things vary when it comes to the lives of the citizens living on respective cities.

Probably the most important ideas in geographical thinking is space. How space differs from one point to another, a space from another space, and all the lives and things that exist on a specific place directly affects the composition and its identity. Understanding how space affects both another space and the space itself will enable one with geographical thinking to answer questions that are beyond the clauses of geography as a social science. Understanding identity to a specific space or location depending on the demographics of the people and the composition of its environment can help anybody have a distinction to those places that can help them formulate solutions based on those identities. Another important idea is environment. Environment differs in a very dynamic sense and understanding how the surroundings both near and far can have a specific influence not just on the lives that are within the same environment but also the lives of other environment that depends on the other. A good example of this is the importance of the Amazon rainforest. Having a geographical thinking will give meaning to its importance not just to the people of Brazil or South America but also to the world since it is the largest rainforest and emits the most oxygen that is needed to sustain the lives of every living organism especially us humans.

In my own understanding, geographical techniques revolve around the same techniques within other research areas especially closely linked to history. Just like what was discussed in historical method, geographical experiments and studies for me revolve around three main stages. Data Gathering, Data Analysis, and Conclusion. Data gathering is an important part of any study. We gather as many quality data from authentic and credible data sources. Unlike history wherein facts are usually based on the people’s standpoints and accounts, geographical data is quantitative. Data about area, demographics, climate and all other geographical topics can be measured using tools and instruments that provide numeric value. Once the data has been collected, then it will be analyzed. Samples are very important because analysis of these will be the fortresses of the study that will provide theoretical frameworks on the development of conclusions. To analyze data, geographers now use GIS or Geographic Information Systems to compute the data and create visualizations from the given datasets that are fed as inputs. Visualizations vary from maps to matrices that don’t just talk about the physical component of a region but also the number of drug related Crime in Florida or to present the climate and vegetation change in the eastern United States (National Acamdemies Press, 1997). In my line of work in Marketing Analytics, we use a visualization tool called Tableau. This tool presents data into visual dashboards that can tell not just the measures but even creates a story that is beneficial to the marketing department. One of the visualizations that I use are maps to show how contacts are engaged and the rate of their engagement based on the US states that our company is catering at. Having that visualization can lead our executives into conclusions and decisions where our marketing dollars should be spent at to increase the company’s revenue. Even in the field of marketing, one can understand – through geographical techniques and thinking- how revenue can be maximized depending on the demographics and population of the people on the states that are competitive and those that needs more engagement programs.

Geography talks about the relationship between us human beings and the environment. Just as Susan Hanson suggested on one of her papers, geographers have this advantage that offers an unparalleled lens for understanding the world. This advantage can then be shared to non-geographers and can then improve their understanding and even can be advantageous to growing the number of geography practitioners (Hanson, 2004).

As a little boy, growing up memorizing the flags, capitals, and the location of all the countries in the World Map given by his uncle, I have always been fascinated by places. I had an early understanding of how people differ from place to place and that empowered me to be more understanding of the world I am living in and gave me the lenses to see the relationship between diversities. I am continually learning to think geographically, and hopefully someday I can call myself a Geographer.

References

Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. (2012). Why Nations Fail.
ESRI Schools and Libraries Program. (2003). Geographic Inquiry: Thinking Geographically. Retrieved from https://www.esri.com/Industries/k-12/education/~/media/Files/Pdfs/industries/k-12/pdfs/geoginquiry.pdf

Geographical Association. (2012, August). Thinking Geographically. Retrieved from Geographical Association: https://www.geography.org.uk/write/MediaUploads/Support%20and%20guidance/GA_GINCConsultation_ThinkingGeographically_NC_2012.pdf

Hanson, S. (2004). Who Are ‘‘We’’? An Important Question for Geography's
Future. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 715-722.

National Acamdemies Press. (1997). Chapter: 4 Geography's Techniques. Retrieved from Rediscovering Geography: New Relevance for Science and Society: https://www.nap.edu/read/4913/chapter/6#59

Government vs. Governance

There is a place for efficiency in the government, and it does not solely depend on the leaders that facilitates the government processes, but it depends on every person governed. Governance is not provided not just by a certain group of officials because as society evolves, more actors and groups are now directly involved in the process of governance which are grouped into three legs, the government, the market, and the civic societies. (Carino, 2004) For a democracy to work as it is intended, power should not be confined in just a single person or a single group of people that are often the elites. Power should be distributed to every person in the society and it is up to the citizens to claim and practice that power for themselves.

Governance is a term not used to relate to government processes only in the past few decades. We equate both terms, government and governance through basic definitions that we can find. From the root word govern, which simply denotes power and control over a system or territory. But Carino differentiated them by pointing that the government is all about control, while governance is all about management. Through this, one can easily say that governance is better than government, but we must also know that government is a vital part of governance. Aside from the role of the government, there are two other actors that work with it for effective governance, markets and civil societies. The market or the private sector generates wealth for dispersal and a barrack of human resource and talent. Businesses that both supply goods and services to consumers and wages to human resources that they employ. Civil society on the other hand represents the public and raise voices of those who have none or don’t know how to use theirs. Together, these three must work together and use their abilities to cooperate which will then provide success not just to the system itself but to society at large.

Soup to Nuts (Center for Civic Education, 1977) is a very good cartoon that illustrates the advantage and disadvantage of having a government and the type of governance that a government employ. It shows that even if the market and civil society is independent from the government, they can still be affected by the kind of government it works at. In the filmstrip, the people on the city decided to hire a new despot that will oversee governing the city because the last government was elected by the people with a promise to be “out of people’s way” and gave all the control to the people themselves. It was chaos. This part of the filmstrip showed the importance of government not just in the distribution of resources, but also for maintaining order within the society. The people then decided to hire a new despot which made a huge turnaround for the better in the beginning but when the power shifted to just one person, too much control of not just the government but even control of the market through monopoly and control of society by imposing inhumane rules. This is also a good presentation that the government cannot just command or regulate its citizens, it can also mark them as adversaries to prevent alleged abuse(Weil, 2015).

“Membership in participation, but not participation for participation’s sake” simply denotes that for one to claim and exercise power as a citizen in democracy, one should not just abide by the law and follow and leave it as it is. Besides, the power of the citizen doesn’t just start and end every election day where we chose our leaders, it should live with us every single day. From as simple as being aware of the news to organizing thoughts and collectively sharing those ideas to several people, one can really make a difference through many.

Que, S. (2019). Government vs. Governance In the end we can see that whether we have different branches of governance, everything must work together to compliment and coordinate the other, and who should oversee it? The people, society. By actively participating in the governance of the state. By having a voice and letting it resonate. On Eric Liu’s Ted talk, he presented the six sources of power, most important of these in a democracy is the last source, Numbers (Liu, 2014). Through numbers, power can be shared from person to person and collectively, we can make our small voices enough to make difference.

References:

Carino, L. V. (2004). "The Concept of Governance". In From Government to Governance.
Center for Civic Education. (1977). Soup to Nuts. Retrieved from http://www.civiced.org/e-news/?p=1834#more-1834
Liu, E. (2014, November). Eric Liu: How to understand power. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_liu_how_to_understand_power
Weil, F. (2015, March 21). Government vs. Governance. Retrieved from The Huffington Post: http://bit.ly/2CEgnJO