Hello!
I am still tryintg to make productive sense of Noel`s byline for RGS 08. what...?
surely geography is no longer leather elbow-pads bound and full of ilvely stuff??? isnt it? It1`s about life, probably/surely more than the ever popular psychlogy?
I did a program-ok a decade ago that rtied to articulate some cultural geogrpahy and got 2 million viewers, and there are many more out there more intersting than me and mine.
What`s the block?
David
>>> Marcus Welsh <[log in to unmask]> 01/17/08 1:05 PM >>>
This morning on the BBC news, and on the BBC website
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7192330.stm) the headline reads
"Geography must be made relevant".
In what is reported as a pretty damning indictment of the state of geography
teaching in the (English) school classroom a recent Ofsted report finds
that, based on inspections and pupil surveys, geography is the worst-taught
and most boring subject in schools.
Interestingly different news papers have highlighted different aspects of
the report with:
Popularity of 'boring' geography on wane - The Guardian
Geography classes 'ignore key issues' - The Independent
Geography in decline - Ofsted - The Press Association
Geography teaching found to be "mediocre" - Reuters
And then the more conservative minded papers emphasising a nanny state
angle:
Geography take up 'hit by health and safety' - Daily Telegraph
Field trips seen as too dangerous so pupils are ditching geography - The
Times
Health and safety restrictions making geography history in schools - The
Daily Mail
___________________________
From the BBC report we see that:
Inspectors have called for a shake-up with more fieldwork plus lessons on
climate change, trade and the concepts of sustainable living and
environmental footprints. Chief inspector of education Christine Gilbert
said: "Geography is at a crucial period in its development. [.] More needs
to be done to make the subject relevant and more engaging for pupils." The
report said: "It is important that the citizens of tomorrow understand the
management of risk, appreciate diversity, are aware of environmental issues,
promote sustainability and respect human rights and social inclusion"
Schools Minister Jim Knight said: "Last year we made radical reforms to the
geography curriculum to make it more engaging and more relevant to young
people's lives - bringing in topics like environmental change and
sustainable development, but keeping the essential basics of maps and globes
and atlases." [for which read; geography is basically about "maps, maps and
more maps". LOL!]
Combined with the National Curriculum articulations of school geography one
could read the discipline in terms of a discourse on scale, "environment",
networks (interdependence between places), and positivism (looking for
patterns and explaining why places are the same or different) with
"sustainable development" the overarching normative framework for moving
from understanding issues to addressing them. What is striking is an
apparent constitution and contemporary re-fixing of "geography" as a
unifying holistic subject, yet at University level the trajectory is for an
increasing bifurcation into the "human" and "physical" disciplines. If
future University student expectations are framed by a concept of geography
that diverges from its teaching and practice at "big school" what effect
will embarking upon a degree scheme that broadly speaking insists on
specialism as a human or physical geographer have upon future uptake and
drop-out rates?
Anyway, and with some trepidation, the point of message was simply to
highlight yet another contemporary debate about geography which seems to try
and "fix" the subject in ways many in the academy would not recognise, and
one where yet again the subtext seems to be of relating geography to issues
that MATTER to the public and policy wonks. Whilst many of us operate, or at
least act as if we operate in an academic bubble immune from outside
pressures, (borders guarded fiercely against too much political
interference), one has to wonder at the longer term implications of this
critical attention on geography. For example upon the funding regimes of the
discipline; will the more esoteric explorations and theorisations the
discipline engages in become marginalised as "not relevant", or even "not
geography"? Might this "discourse of geography" * slowly nudge us into a
policy focused, politically engaged, people based regime? Will we all have
to start really demonstrating the relevance and application of our research
and teaching to the world around us?
Castree asks three very interesting questions in his RGS Conference Theme
2008 outline (see RGS website) in relation to the field of geography:
* "What geographies matter to geographers and why?"
* "Which ought to be the focus of our energies?"
* "How do answers relate to the geographies valued (or not) by social
actors in the wider world - communities, states, corporations, publics and
many others besides?"
The first question seems to be one geographers are happy to debate and
investigate till the cows come home. But the latter two are more
troublesome. The key word in the second is "ought", and "valued" in the
third. These are hard questions, potentially divisive ones which may be why
we shy away from them. But these public and very critical (in the dictionary
sense of the word) "discourses of geography" suggest these are questions
that do need to be tackled, that the "discipline" needs to have a long hard
look at the "discourse of geography" * as we do NOT live and work in a
bubble, the outside world does and will impact upon our practice.
So as well as allowing us all to demonstrate that the geography we do
"matters" I have hopes the RGS-IBG will include a serious and critical
discussion of the discipline and its future. Apart from todays
"Participatory Geographies Working Group" call for papers I get the
impression that in the main we are emphasising the former (demonstrating the
relevance of what WE do, mainly to ourselves) and not paying attention to
the latter. Obviously I have not made an indepth study of this (though I
have looked through the RGS list of calls for papers), nor do I know the
content of papers submitted for consideration, so I will happily confess I
may be reading the runes wrong. I also appreciate that drawing big
conclusions and pitching large (and frankly, as Castree puts it "perennial")
questions based on a few media stories and one Ofsted report is tenuous, but
as well as highlighting the state of geography in the school system this
report and its coverage seems to highlight some lingering questions about
"the state of geography".
Can anyone confirm how, or if, these elements of the RGS-IBG theme are being
covered generally, and even if they are being covered, how or will that
shape future thinking and practice?
* as Castree says in his RGS Conference Theme 2008 abstract "the discipline
of geography is much smaller than the discourse of geography - a discourse
comprising all those geographical knowledges and representations of the
world produced and disseminated by myriad actors who are not in any formal
sense 'geographers'".
Marc Welsh
IGES
Aberystwyth
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