Ofsted has reported on the quality of geography teaching in schools based on its inspections between 2004 and 2007, finding that it was the worst taught subject in schools and that pupils found it boring. As a suggestion, Ofsted recommended covering global issues in classes including climate change and sustainable development as well as trade disputes. The Inspectorate feels that geography needs to be made more relevant.
Words fail me - well almost!! I did Geography O and A levels and also sat the supplementary S level paper you could do at the time (1981), and it was the most interesting and most relevant subject I did. Even (perish the thought) 27 years ago we studied the greenhouse effect and climate change, and debated whether it would make life warmer or colder in the UK. Field trips and questions about soil and river formations and glaciation made any trip out with the school or my family more interesting as you kept a good eye out for a hanging valley or a fault formation.
My inspirational teacher - Daphne Swann - had travelled widely in school holidays and worked with international aid agencies in Africa as well as teacher exchanges in Europe. Consequently any discussion of third world countries could be enlivened by slide shows and stories from Nigeria or China, while our A level field trip was to Denmark. That included port surveys, dairy farming, retail developments, coastal and dune formation and flora, and glacial deposits via land forms (the end of the last Ice Age ice sheet makes the hills in the centre of Jutland) and the soil and stone forms in those land forms.
And this is perhaps what it comes down to - any subject can be killed by a bad teacher, and any subject can be inspirational with a good teacher. My nascent interest in French aged 10 was killed off for a good 20 years by a poor teacher. My abilities in Maths were limited by having 10 teachers in 2 years and it wasn't until Polytechnic and John Hobson that I remembered I could actually do Maths. I don't think I would have passed Chemistry O level without a fairly scary but amazing year taught by Dilwyn Thomas, and Miss Polemounter enabled me to get a Latin O level and still be able to understand Private Eye citations and church inscriptions even today.
Geography should be one of the easiest to teach and inspire if a teacher has any ability and any interest in the world they live in - do we give potential teachers the right messages?
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