25 years ago, Ron Johnston made an appeal for the future of geography...
"Geographers have disengaged themselves from studying and promoting the uniqueness of place, and consequently have contributed to a general ignorance of the world as a complex mosaic. This disengagement must be corrected... and geographers must once again take the lead in portraying the complex variability of peoples and environments" (Johnston, 1985)
It seems to me that in academic geography we have seen this 'correction' occur to the extent that the positivist approach to geography seen in the 60's and 70's now seems to have withdrawn into the background. In the last quarter of a century we have seen Marxist, feminist and post-structural approaches, alongside a renewed interest in phenomenology, and many more. These may all have their differences but common to them all is the commitment to recognising the variability of place (even in those cases where place is seen to to be no more than a social construction) and to penetrating the 'real mechanisms', as Johnston put it, as opposed to that tendency that positivist approaches have to generalise and observe only the surface of things.
But has school geography followed in the wake of this diversification of approaches?
In many ways, being an employee of the Geographical Association, and one who barely leaves the desk at that, it is not so easy for me to tell as one might think. For I am indeed faced with the many admirable and exciting approaches to teaching and learning geography that are showcased in our journals, on our website, and in our recent manifesto, A Different View (GA, 2009). But to what extent does this represent the geography education landscape as a whole and not just a small band of particularly inspired and energetic individuals? From my place here at the desk I can not tell. I wonder, are there still children sat in boredom, filling in the missing words on handouts and colouring maps, as I once was?
As should be fairly clear by now, I am particularly interested in creative and imaginative approaches to understanding place, not exactly as a replacement of more purely descriptive approaches, but as a necessary complement. As my reading of Proust keeps reminding me, there is a reality that exists away from the exterior one we see only with our eyes, a multi-faceted and kaleidoscopic reality that lies within each of us and which ensures that none of us sees exactly the same world. Writing is one time honoured way we can express this hidden world, but I am open to the possibility that new technologies can offer us yet other ways. One interesting event that is happening on Saturday is Urban Tweet Day, which could potentially result in a fascinating collage of varied perspectives on the urban life.
The potential for teachers to do similar activities with their students is quite vast, and for me, there has never been a more crucial time for us to find these new ways in which to make sense of our world and to appreciate our responsibilities in and for it...
But that is enough dreaming, I should get back to colouring in that map!
References
Johnston, R. (Ed.) (1985) The Future of Geography. London: Methuen.
GA (2009) A Different View: a manifesto from the Geographical Association. Sheffield: Geographical Association.
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