Huh (Geography)
Overall Verdict: ★ ★ ★ ★
Why this book?
Having heard a lot about this book on Twitter, I wanted to see what the fuss was about and borrowed the copy from our school CPD library (my first item loaned!). in this short review I focus mainly on the geography chapter written by David Preece but I know that this will be a book that I come back to countless times- for geography and more. Many of us will know David Preece from Twitter where, with a wealth of experience, David always seems to offer equal parts wisdom, reason and challenge in his thoughts on all things geography education.
David manages to do the same in this short chapter. In just ten pages, he discusses everything from the problems with geography’s stereotypes to the value of the subject associations. He summarises his ideas on the big three ideas of geography before posing multiple questions that you would want to ask of your curriculum. The breadth of issues discussed make it an excellent read and the chapter would be a fantastic starting point for anyone interested in curriculum design in geography- from those at the start of their careers to the very most experienced. This is not a jargon-filled piece of academic literature about our discipline but rather an accessible discussion about the beauty of teaching geography.
Three key takeaways:
1. Whilst curriculum conversations naturally focus on the ‘what’ of teaching, we equally need to ask ‘Where will I see this happening? Where will I see this in the classroom?’ to know the impact of our curriculum.
2. Perhaps the most important element of any curriculum conservation in geography has to be what is left out and why that decision was made.
After all, ‘you can be a brilliant geographer, even a world-class geographer, without having studied certain things, but you could not be a world-class mathematician if you didn’t know how to do algebra’ (p.149).
3. I’m always grateful for a new punchy quote to answer the question of ‘what is a geographer?’ and David doesn’t disappoint!
‘A geographer who goes out into the world, having made the decision not to study it as GCSE or A-Level, needs to be able to recognise the complexity of the world and appreciate the interconnectedness of different aspects of the world.’ (p.148)