Geography and educational aims

This post follows on from the previous one on Justifying geography.

The kinds of aims we should have for the living of a fulfilling human life are clearly highly debatable, as is the idea that we can provide any kind of objective list of aims in the first place. However, I am not delving into this particular issue here (see White, 2005 for more on this). In this post I am more concerned with examining how we might go about justifying geography in light of the kinds of aims which actually have been enshrined in the latest version of the KS3-4 National Curriculum (and I assume here that these have been decided upon after lengthy and painstaking deliberation). I must also add that at the time of writing a new government has just taken office that holds some very different conceptions of education from its predecessor, and so it could be that these aims are revised again in the not too distant future. Nevertheless, the aims as they stand are not overly contentious, and they provide a good starting platform from which to begin our justification for geography. I see this as an unavoidably slow and meticulous task that really requires empirical evidence to back it up. However, we can at least make some headway here.

It is fairly widely accepted that the aims of education for young people should include personal well-being aims, such as ensuring they become knowledgeable, healthy and confident individuals, and more extrinsic interpersonal aims to do with respecting and caring for others. (Though see the work of Ecclestone and Hayes, 2009, for a view highly critical of harnessing subjects too closely to well-being aims). These latter are often framed in terms of good citizenship as they are in our National Curriculum, one of the aims of which is to create 'responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society'. There is little doubt that these two broad kinds of aims are interconnected - a sense of personal worth and fulfillment would seem desirable, though maybe not strictly necessary, in order to foster a spirit of friendly civic cooperation in an individual. Anyway, it seems as though our task would now seem to bifurcate in these two general directions. How can the study of geography contribute to both personal and social well-bring aims? More specifically, how does the subject enable individuals to become the 'successful learners', 'confident individuals' and 'responsible citizens' specified by the National Curriculum?

These aims are, however, still a little on the broad side. We need to unpack them further and thankfully the most recent revision of the National Curriculum does elucidate further how these aims might be met. For example, successful learners are said amongst other things to 'have enquiring minds and think for themselves to process information, reason, question and evaluate'. Responsible citizens, on the other hand, 'appreciate the benefits of diversity' and 'understand their own and others' cultures and traditions'. Now we are getting to some real nitty-gritty. If geography can be shown to help meet just a few of these requirements, and more successfully so than other subjects that feasibly could take its place, then there is surely a strong argument for its place on the curriculum. This investigation in full could take up an entire book. Let us take just a brief look at the few subsidiary aims mentioned above for now, and then we may at least have an idea of how we may proceed.

I recently discovered a fine article from the journal Geography written by a (then) newly-qualified teacher called James Cameron (2005). Having correctly identified the need to justify geography as a core subject, Cameron begins by claiming that geography has the notion of 'enquiry', or the search for questions, at its very heart. Though not unique, this makes it unlike many other disciplines, particularly in the sciences, which are based on "a reductionist quest for answers or a unifying theory" (Cameron, 2005: 80) Geography has commonly been seen as a content heavy subject, filled with lots of facts to learn about capital cities and longest rivers, but Cameron points out that geography is also largely about asking questions and gaining an understanding of ideas like space, interactions and diversity. There are enormous educational consequences that come with this. Regarding what a student of geography might actually learn from their time as a student, Cameron has this to say:

"I would hope that they would develop a range of skills that would serve them well in their future lives, be they in a geographical field or otherwise. The most important of these would be a questioning mind. Learning facts does nothing for the sense of enquiry; realising that there are no easy answers to complex questions does." (Ibid: 80)

Personally I think it incorrect to say that learning facts does nothing for the sense of enquiry. I do not think that there is anything wrong with facts per se and actually I believe that many young children are fascinated by them. Rather, I think they can spur on and add significance to enquiry. That point aside, and assuming Cameron is largely correct, we have an example which suggests that geography may well have something substantial to contribute towards the 'enquiring minds' aim that we saw above. Certainly, there is plenty of evidence to support the view that geography does indeed help to create enquiring minds, and a good starting point here is Roberts (2010). In addition, Cameron believes that geography is about recognising and understanding differences and similarities, and that one of the chief outcomes of a geographical education is an interest and passion for diversity. The study of geography, according to Cameron, develops:

"a cultural awareness of societies, by wondering how people interact with their environments, by considering how the actions of an individual can have consequences beyond the individual, and by standing on top of a hill in the rain, wondering why the view is the way it is and loving it." (Ibid: 80)

Here too we find some obvious links with the statutory National Curriculum aims, which, you will recall, look to produce responsible citizens who 'appreciate the benefits of diversity' and who 'understand their own and others' cultures and traditions'. True, there is little mention here of enjoying the view from the top of a hill and it might be worth pondering why such an aim is omitted, but in general we are now starting to see clearly how geography can play an important part in meeting these well recognized educational aims and outcomes. Of course, I have only scratched the surface here and it should be clear that we could go on, taking each curricular aim individually and determining, ideally with the help of careful empirical research, how various aspects of geography can contribute to meeting them. As I have noted, this could be a book length endeavor, but I hope I have made clear why this procedure of justification is crucial and how we can proceed in this matter.

References

Cameron, J. (2005) 'A Personal Rationale for the inclusion of Geography in the School Curriculum', Geography, 90, 1, pp.79-83
Ecclestone, K. & Hayes, D. (2009) 'Changing the subject: the educational implications of developing emotional well-being', Oxford Review of Education, 35, 3, pp.371-389
Roberts, M. (2009) 'Geographical Enquiry', Teaching Geography, 35, 1, pp.6-9
White, J. (2005) [1986] 'The problem of self-interest: The educator's perspective', in The Curriculum and the Child: The selected works of John White. Abingdon: Routledge

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