Search

The writer was asked to prepare this paper by the Education Committee of the Royal Geog aphical Society in orde to clarify the position of geography within current experiments with the curriculum, in the schools in England and Wales. The Society had originally published a pamphlet in 1950 entitled Geography and 'Social Studies* in schools, the aim of which was to defend the position of geography against a possible 'take-over* by a new subject then labelled 'Social Studies*. This pamphlet was revised in 1954. In 1955 tne Education Committee of the R.G.S. provided a further report on the situation of geography in schools under the heading 'Geography in Education' in Vol. 121 (pp. 190-6) of the Geographical Journal. This report was essentially a reaffirmation of the value of geography as a 'discipline* in the education of pupils and students. The nature of this 'discipline* was stated to be that of the accurate observation and recording of information and its subsequent analysis and interpretations. The present paper was submitted to the Education Committee of the Society at its meeting on 26 January 1968. The writer assumes that, though the Society is interested in the position of geography in schools, it accepts that schools must be free to experi? ment with their curricula, with the consequence that, in the case of geography, not only may the factual content of courses change, but the concepts or principles taught will evolve and the curricular contexts in which such subject matter is taught may alter with time. This paper will therefore concentrate on: (a) stating the various ways in which curriculum planning may involve geography either as a separate subject or as part of a broader teaching scheme; (b) assessing the advantages and disadvantages of teaching geography as part of a 'combined subject field*. Throughout this paper the word 'subject* is used in preference to 'discipline*, since the latter word often has connotations implying status in relation to other subjects, which are irrelevant to the purpose of the paper. Historical perspective.?When the original R.G.S. pamphlet on 'Geography and "Social Studies** in Schools' was written, education in the U.K. was recovering from war time austerity and was in the process of being transformed by the 1944 Education Act. In the 'Brave New World* atmosphere which then prevailed and in the excitement which attended the formation of the new secondary modern schools, there was a feeling that the curriculum of these schools should be different and challenging. It was recognized that in the humanities, if the teacher was to make education child-centred rather than subject-centred, then a start could be made by finding out what interested pupils and to develop these particular interests no matter in what subject fields these lay. However, such procedures, whilst they might be easy to implement in the primary school where teachers stayed with one class for long periods, might well run into diffi? culties in secondary schools where subject specialists operated and where a greater depth of understanding was required. Consequently, there was a tendency to compromise and to argue that such new ways of treating the curriculum might be achieved on a more limited basis by joining history, geography and civics together into 'Social Studies* and thereby enabling the teacher to develop such themes as appeared appro? priate to him in the light of his knowledge of the class he was teaching. Though there is little quantitative evidence available, this type of combined subject never achieved a wide measure of popularity in our secondary schools, no matter how taught, except in certain areas where groups of 'progressive* teachers experimented

This paper is the record of the Alexander von Humboldt Centenary Fesitival at Berlin on 18-19th May 1959, 32nd German Geographical Congress on 20-24th, and the author's round the world travel, May to July of the same year.1) Tokyo-Rome-Stockholm.2) Special Commission on the 1:1, 000, 000 World Population Map of the International Geographical Union, under the chairmanship of Professor Dr. W. William- Olsson, Stockholm School of Economics. It was held at Stockholm on 13-15th May, to which Prof. Dr. F. Burg-dorfer (Munchen), Mr. R. Perothero (Liverpool), Mr. G. Norstrom (Stockholm) attended. We discussed mainly on the method of absolute population distribution maps.3) Stockholm and Uppsala.4) Humboldt Festival and the 32nd German Geographical Congress. The Festival was held at the residence of Humboldt family at Tegel and the recently constructed Congress Hall at Tiergarten, both in West Berlin. More than 1, 000 participants, not only geographers but also scientists of various fields, diplomats, govermental officers, and others assembled. The Geographical Congress (Geographentag), including Carl Ritter's Centenary Festival, was held on 20-24th May at the Congress Hall. There were 16 selected reports on German and foreign regional geography, urban geography, geomorphology, eustatic changes, and cultural geography. A half day excursion in West and East Berlin was held on 22nd. After the Congress, three excursions in Braunschweig, Bad Harzburg, and Minden were prepared. At the festivals, Prof. Dr. H. Lautensach and Prof. Dr. C. O. Sauer were honoured with the Humboldt Gold Medal; Prof. Dr. H. W. Ahlmann and Prof. Dr. C. Troll were awarded the Ritter Gold Medal; The Ritter Silver Medals were given to Prof. Dr. J. Budel, Prof. Dr. E. Otremba, Prof. Dr. R. Maack, and Prof. Dr. S. Kiuchi. The Geographical Society of Berlin (Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde zu Berlin; President Prof. Dr. J. H. Schultze) took the best effort to organize these Meetings.5) Excursion in Braunschweig.6) Days in Dahlemdorf, Berlin.7) Bonn and the University of Bonn.8) Excursion in Rhein-Westfalen.9) Strooll in Greater London.10) Liverpool and Chester.11) Flight over the Atlantic Ocean.12) The discovery of America in 1959's.13) University and Institutes of United States: Their environment and activities.14) Country life in Michigan.15) San Francisco to Tokyo.Acknowledgment: The author would like to write here his deepest gratitude to all the professors, members, and institutions which he has visited. To the Science Council of Japan, Asia Foundation, Freie Universitat Berlin, International Geographical Union, Handelshogskolan i Stockholm, British Council, and other institutes, which have supported the travel, the author expresses his best regard.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse film topographies of Gdańsk and investigate the motifs connected with sea and water. I intend to ask myself some questions concerning the ways in which film makers develop aquatic motifs and use waterside location, to what extent film scenery – with water as the dominant element – recreates and creates “the meaning of place”. I treat the sea and water as images and film locations with certain aesthetic, economical and cultural functions. The methodological basis is cultural geography and discovering the relationship film–city–region, film–real and symbolic space, as well as visual anthropology, which makes it possible to capture the methods of coding signs on the screen, pointing to explicit and implicit ideologies, and cultural meanings, constructed in the process of sender– recipient activities. Research material includes selected Polish feature films: Wolne miasto, directed by Stanisław Różewicz (1958); Do widzenia, do jutra, directed by Janusz Morgenstern (1960); Człowiek z żelaza, directed by Andrzej Wajda (1981); Wróżby kumaka, directed by Robert Gliński (2005); Miasto z morza, directed by Andrzej Kotkowski (2009), and others.

No other elementary textbook costs the publishers so much to make ready for the market as does the school geography; and none comes in for a greater share of abuse, by teachers and schoolmen generally. If the teaching force of the country really know what they want in this particular, they have never succeeded in making it clear. The criticisms in the main have been iconoclastic rather than suggestive. The present paper, while frankly stating a personal view-point, will attempt, in the end to contribute something on the constructive side.

Geography of Domestication . By Erich Isaac. (Foundations of Cultural Geography Series.) Pp. viii + 132. (Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 1970.) $6.50 boards; $2.95 paper.

This paper is concerned with two distinct topics, first, the meaning and content of social geography, and second, the application of this subject to the study of the British Colonial Empire. It is the view of the writers that work in social geography should form an essential part of any programme of research into the problems of the colonies. Social geography has four main branches. In the first place it is concerned with the distribution of population over the earth's surface, and maps of the density and distribution of population are the principal tools of the social geo? grapher. Secondly, the distribution and form of rural settlements, that is of villages, hamlets, farms, and scattered dwellings, must be considered. The third branch of the subject is the geographical study of towns and cities, or "urban geography" as it is sometimes called, and the increasing urbanization of society gives special significance to this branch at the present time. The term "social geography" appeared on 9 August 1943, at the head of a few paragraphs in The Times, describing a regional survey of the city of Hull. Lastly, the distribution of social groups and their "way of life" in different environments must be studied, including a geographical analysis of the housing, health, and conditions of labour of different communities. It is obvious that social geography here overlaps considerably with other social studies including social medicine. There is no doubt that social geography has been obscured and sometimes neglected because it has been generally subordinated to economic geography, which is primarily concerned with agricultural and industrial production, commerce, and communications. Economic geography has such obvious utility, and its material is so readily available, that it has pushed social geo? graphy into the background. An American geographer, Professor Richard Hartshorne, has gone so far as to say that "geographers are justified in regarding human, or cultural geography very largely in terms of economic geo? graphy," * while two British writers have asserted, perhaps somewhat unfairly, that economic geography is "the only aspect of geography in which Britain can claim distinction." 2 Professor P. M. Roxby on the other hand has rightly observed that "we run the risk of losing the unity and cultural value of geo? graphy if we overstress the purely economic aspects, and make, for example, the distribution, actual and potential, of products and manufactures the supreme objective." 3 The increasing predominance of economics in academic thought has afTected history as well as geography. Professor E. L. Woodward of Oxford