Tell Us about Landforms, Dummies!

Landforms, Rose, landforms!

Somewhere about the sixth or seventh grade you probably had a science class that taught you all you (thought) you'd ever need to know about geography. Never mind that in one semester or one year, for maybe three or four hours a week; you talked about physical geography, cultural geography, and probably touched on just about every other kind of geography there is. Very likely one of your tests involved memorizing state capitals... If you're like Classroom.com's Rose Guastella, that's probably about where your geography study ended - which is why the liberal arts major had no business pretending to answer the question, "What Are the Five Landform Regions that Make Up the United States?" It's also probably why she did such a lousy job...

Sure, Rosie wandered over to wikipedia and got a list of regions: "West, Middle West, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast." Guastella even managed to copy the names of all fifty states into (more or less) the proper regions. Hell, she even managed to convey such scintillating information as

"The Northeast region borders Canada to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the east and abuts the Middle West and South East regions..."

...although she said jack about the landforms in the northeast region (which was, after all, her assignment); just that information and the states it comprises (NT, VT, MA, RI, CT, NY, NJ, PA, DE, MD and DC)

Guastella even touched upon the concept of physical geography – sort of – in the DMS-mandated introduction,

"The United States is often divided into five regions as a way of studying landforms, or regions, of the country. They include the West, Southwest, Middle West, Southeast and Northeast. Each area has its own geological makeup and characteristics.,"

although she misidentified geography (she called it "geology") and then blithely ignored the "geological [sic] makeup and characteristics" of said regions in the process. So what are the characteristics? Well, according to Rose...

West:  ...ummm, it includes Hawaii and Alaska? Middle West:  ...it's also called the "Midwest"? It's bordered by the Great Lakes? Northeast: [this space intentionally left blank] Southeast: "Parts of Florida have a subtropical climate and environment." Southwest:  Oooh! it's "home to several deserts"! Though we've never heard of the "Sagebrush Desert," Rose... and it's not the "Sonora Desert," it's the Sonoran Desert...

Nope, in almost all cases, Guastella did little more than transcribe a list of states. There's virtually no mention whatsoever of landforms, which are the reason for the division, and likewise little or no mention of major landforms You know, stuff such as

West:  The Rocky Mountains, the Cascades, the Sierra Nevada, the Great Basin... Middle West:  Ohio River Valley, Mississippi River, Great Lakes, Great Plains Northeast: Appalachians, Adirondacks Southeast: Appalachians, Everglades, piedmont, Atlantic coastal plain... Southwest:  Yep, them there deserts. Also part of the Colorado Plateau, the southern Rockies, the Basin and Range...

In other words, Rose did a crappy job: she did little more than merely list the states assigned to each section instead of discuss the reasons why the states are lumped together into five regions. We think that sort of answer is insufficient, and is precisely the sort of bullshit for which The Antisocial Network hands out another Dumbass of the Day award every day.

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