Transcript Why the ICGG is critical

Radical school geography: retrospect and prospect
1983
2023
2003
Geographical Education will help practicing
teachers take a critical look at geography in
secondary schools. After an account of recent
curriculum change, it introduces the emerging
humanistic and radical forms of geographical
education which, it is argued, will allow geography
teachers to make a constructive contribution to
human development and social justice.
Chapter 3 Behavioural geography
Chapter 4 Humanistic geography
Chapter 5 Geography through art
Chapter 6 Welfare approaches to geography
Chapter 7 Radical geography
Chapter 8 Political education
Chapter 9 Development education
Chapter 10 Environmental education
Chapter 11 Urban Studies
Three steps in my argument:
• a look back at developments in geography, education
and school geography over the past 20 years;
• an assessment of what these developments now offer
school geography in relation to teaching and learning
about space, place and nature; and
• an illustration of how this potential might be realised
within KS3 curriculum units.
Forms of school geography and ideological traditions
• Geography as skills
• Geography as cultural
heritage
• Geography as personal
growth
• Geography as critical literacy
• Utilitarian/informational
• Cultural restorationism
• Liberal humanist (classical
humanist)
• Progressive (child centred)
• Reconstructionist (radical)
• Vocationalist (industrial
trainer)
Morgan, 2002
Rawling, 2001
Radical school geography: an initial orientation
School geography as critical literacy is
assertive, class-conscious and political in
content. Social issues are addressed head on.
The stance is oppositional, collective
aspirations and criticisms become the basis for
action. Pupils are taught how to read and write
the world.
After John Morgan, 2002, 56
Urgent questions . . geographical responses
For the questions that radical
geography was founded to confront
are present still in mutated, far
more powerful and dangerous,
social and cultural forms . . . the
terrible injuries visited still on the
world's most vulnerable peoples,
the formation of global structures
far beyond human control, the
transformation of material into
virtual reality, and the consequence
of all these and more in the
massive destruction of nature
Richard Peet, 1999
Some of the biggest and most
pressing issues of our era are, not
solely but none the less absolutely
inherently geographical. Whether it
be globalization, the rapidly shifting
mappings between society and
place, or the relationship between
society and nature. Space, place
and nature. Each of them is at the
heart of major questions of our time
and each of them is in need of, and
indeed is in the process of, being
reimagined.
Doreen Massey, 2001
Geography at Key Stage 3
However, there continues to be more unsatisfactory teaching in
geography than in most other subjects. OFSTED, 2001/2
• narrow range of teaching approaches
• over-reliance on a single text book or photocopied worksheets
• teachers’ low expectations
• recording rather than applying information
• lack of differentiation
• teaching that is competent but ‘largely cheerless’
From radical to critical geography
Richard Peet on the development of radical geography
1.
Rediscovery of classics of Marxism. A
phase of rediscovery.
2.
Movement through structuralism,
structuration and realism to emerge in
more diverse forms such as regulation
theory. A phase of breakdown in political
solidarity.
3.
Entry of poststructural and postmodern
philosophies and a more deeply theorized
feminism. Some Marxist geographers
appropriate and synthesise the new ideas.
A phase of eclecticism and antagonisms.
4.
Consolidation of realistic and profound
theories, rooted in the material and able to
confront cultural technologies that
incorporate resistance. A phase of
reconciliation and mutual respect
Critical human geography
Critical human geography is now a diverse set of ideas and practices linked by a
‘shared commitment to emancipatory politics within and beyond the discipline, to the
promotion of progressive social change and to the development of a broad range of
critical theories and their application in geographical research and political
(Johnston, Gregory and Smith, 1994, 126).
It is characterised by internal specialization and philosophical pluralism and includes
geographies of gender, disability, sexuality, environment, youth, sub-cultures,
fundamentalisms, and more.
The so-called ‘cultural turn’ is thoroughly evident in critical geography for intellectual
shifts attendant upon the transition from modernity to postmodernity have
heightened the significance of culture, identity and consumption and lessened the
significance of economics, social class and production.
Why the ICGG is critical . .
We are CRITICAL because we demand and fight for social change aimed at
dismantling prevalent systems of capitalist exploitation; oppression on the basis of
gender, race and sexual preference; imperialism, neo-liberalism, national aggression
and environmental destruction.
We are CRITICAL because we refuse the self-imposed isolation of much academic
research, believing that social science belongs to the people and not the
increasingly corporate universities.
We are CRITICAL because we seek to build a society that exalts differences, and
yet does not limit social and economic prospects on the basis of them.
We are CRITICAL because in opposing existing systems that defy human rights, we
join with existing social movements outside the academy that are aimed at social
change.
http://econgeog.misc.hit-u.ac.jp/icgg/
The social construction of space, place
and nature
The case for border geography
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Only a minority of critical geographers seek to marry research and teaching with
social and political activism – geography fails to ‘make a difference’
Changes in how academic labour is valued since the early 1980s have allowed
CG to flourish because it can be abstracted into the ‘contentless currency’ of
RAE/QAA culture
The forces that allow CG to blossom are also those that label such activities as
working with school teachers as non-academic and invaluable
Time for CGs to debate the moral and political economy of the academy;
rethink the role of transformative intellectual; and devote more effort to a border
geography that can transcend the divide between academic and non-academic
communities
Action research offers a way of doing geography that connects with the
marginalized – of geographers occupying a ‘third space’ of critical engagement
between the academy and the activist (see K&H, 1999 for case studies)
Kitchen & Hubbard, 1999, Castree, 2002
From radical to critical education
Critical pedagogy 1: education as praxis
All knowledge starts from activity in the material world and returns to it
dialectically. Theory is a guide to practice and practice a test of theory.
Critical pedagogy claims that knowledge and truth should not be products to
be transmitted to students, but practical questions to be addressed as
students and teachers create and re-create knowledge by reflecting and
acting on significant events and issues that affect their everyday lives.
Four principles of dialectics:
- Totality
- Movement
- Qualitative change
- Contradiction
Critical pedagogy 2: students as researchers
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Pupils are active in the learning process and much learning is
experiential
Pupils are taught to think critically as they investigate issues relevant to
their present and future lives
Pupils develop a critical understanding of their own histories and
futures
Pupils learn about existing social and cultural structures and processes
and more democratic alternatives
Pupils clarify and develop values
Pupils develop the knowledge, skills and values required by active and
critical citizens
Critical pedagogy 3: teachers as facilitators
• Teachers are co-researchers with pupils into the structures and
processes that prevent/encourage social justice and
sustainability
• Teachers share their aims and theory with their pupils
• Teachers organise democratic, informal yet intellectually
disciplined classrooms
• Teachers encourage students to see themselves not as
consumers but as producers of knowledge
• Teachers relinquish their authority as truth providers and
assume the authority of facilitators.
State restructuring of education
NC, SATS, league tables, Ofsted, TTA. Intensification of
treachers’ work. Criticism of ‘trendy’ teachers and teacher
educators. Part time contracts. Performance related pay.
Classroom assistants. General Teaching Council. Increased
managerialism.Requirements of QTS. Attacks on comprehensive
principle. Specialist schools. Marginalisation of theory in teacher
education and CPD. Erosion of space for critical reflection and
autonomy of teachers and teacher educators. PFI and corporate
funding of schools. Differentiation and increased marketisation of
schooling. Classroom assistants.
See Hill, 2001
Re-imagining space
Space and society – the dialectic
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Empty space as a container of
human activity
Space is unproblematic – where
things happen
An a-political space, serving as
ideology by neutralising existing
spatial arrangements
Still accepted in school
geography but not in the parent
discipline
Space as HOMOGENEOUS,
CONTINUOUS, OBJECTIVE,
CARTESIAN AND KNOWABLE
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Produced space, a medium
through which social relations
are produced and reproduced
Neglected in social theory
compared to time – “geography
matters” – history is made on,
rather than in or through, space
In PM society, multiple spaces
and identities form the basis for
new forms of politics
Space as FRAGMENTED,
IMAGINATIVE, SUBJECTIVE
AND UNKNOWABLE
Morgan, 2000
A critical pedagogy of space 1
Pupils should learn how space is:
• enabling and constraining:
• filled with power and ideology at all scales
• structured, contested and argued over with multiple points of
resistance – although class may still be ‘key’
• medium for identity formation and experimentation with
alternative lifestyles and communities
• made and can be remade in more sustainable forms
Morgan, 2000
A critical pedagogy of space 2
Globalisation:
• leads to feelings of dislocation and disorientation – increased reflexivity
an opportunity for CP
• challenges modern education’s spaces of enclosure – eg. the subject,
the classroom
• prompts education for global citizenship and PM forms of CP than can
encourage discursive democracy via new modes of knowledge
production (but note contradictions of cyberspace)
• Requires pedagogies of (dis)location to make learners reflexively aware
of forms of counter and disidentification and to develop awareness of
shifting coalitions of resistance eg. anti-globalisation movement
Edwards & Usher, 2000
Children and Identity
• All of us come to be who we are (however ephemeral, multiple
and changing) by being located or locating ouselves (usually
unconsciously) in social narratives largely of our own making.
• These narratives are spatially and temporally specific
• Children are homogenised (by compartmentalisation, spatial
segregation and familialisation) and at the same time
individualised (by rights, commodification, consumption)
• Children are ‘strung out’ between competing definitions of their
‘identity’ – between different structures of meaning – particularly
within their peer culture with its power to include or exclude
• School plays an important role in shaping children’s identities
via for example the formal and informal worlds of the lunchbreak
Space and identity in schools
Here space is crucially important. A fractured geography of sites from the
home and adult-regulated world of the dining hall to the diverse
microgeographies of the lunch break underlie the processes through which
children’s identities are taken up and contested. Notably the lack of adult
regulation within the children’s lunch break world enables hegemonic
groups of girls and boys to take up and occupy particular spaces in ways
which reproduce their dominance and submerge other identities. The
importance of these spaces in creating and sustaining a social order
within the school suggests that there is a need for geographers interested
in children and childhoods to pay more attention to exploring these
neglected geographies.
Gill Valentine, 2000, p. 266
QCA Unit 1 (Yr 7) Making connections
The main purpose of this unit is to further develop pupils’
knowledge and understanding of places. Pupils investigate some of
the features and characteristics of the area around their new school
while also developing a range of geographical skills.
Key aspects include:
Pupils asking geographical questions
Pupils describing and explaining human features
Pupils exploring interdependence and global citizenship
Where is our place and what is it like?
map skills,
concept of ‘our place’,
characteristic features,
field sketch,
top 10 features from
survey,
persuasive writing about
‘our place’
Changing social practices and
. narratives in the school dining
hall. Food practices as a form
of control
Social and spatial divisions in
the playground. Significance of
the body – territories based on
size and age – boundaries –
toilet as an imagined space of
becoming adult for Yr9 girls –
Yr 9 boys and the off licence,
the football field – different
kinds of masculinity and
femininity – loners.
How is our place connected
to other places?
brainstorm connections
and links,
maps and diagrams,
shopping survey,
origins of building
styles/materials/uses
concepts of location,
context, connection,
pattern
Links between food practices
and culture in the school and
those in the wider world.
Constructing identity through
diet – the role of advertising and
peer pressure – eg what British
Asians eat at home and school
Influence of global youth and
consumer culture on playground
differentiation – fashion, music,
computer games, brands –
making the global local.
What do we know, think and feel
about other places?
review KS2 contrasting
localities,
locate them,
similarities and
differences,
places we would like to
visit,
different perceptions of
these places
How do children form identities
in other parts of the world –
what options do different
spaces/places provide?
How do children elsewhere
cope with the tension between
homogenisation and
individualisation?
Are spaces of childhood
sexualisation, such as Girl
Heaven, desirable?
Re-imagining nature
The social construction of nature
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Modernity and society-nature dualism (human vs physical geography)
S/N seen as fundamental, unquestionable.
• But N is S and S is N. Nothing unnatural about humans or indeed cities.
Counters ideologies of nature.
• Focus shifts from N>S or S>N to who constructs what kinds of
nature(s) to what ends and with what social and ecological effects.
(Construction is both material and discursive)
• Critical social theory reveals how natures are made and can be remade
– allows new forms of nature/environmental politics
• Two versions of SC argument: 1 nature can only be known through
culture, 2 nature is increasingly engineered and produced for profit.
• But nature not wholly social, biophysical processes at work
Braun & Castree, 2001
Themes from political ecology
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Political economy
Environmental justice
Gender and the household
Environment and livelihood movements
Environmental history (including ecological
imperialism)
• Ideology and scientific discourse
• The body, identity and consumerism
Unit 14 Can the earth cope?
Ecosystems, population and resources
This unit is in two parts: ecosystems, population and resources;
and global futures/resource issues. Pupils investigate the global
distribution of one or more selected biome, populations and the
resources of food production. They find out about the relationships
between these three themes and about resulting environmental
issues/consequences.
Key aspects include:
Knowledge and understanding of patterns and processes through
an exploration of ecosystems and resource issues
Knowledge and understanding of environmental change and
sustainable development
How are population and resources
interrelated?
Arrive at an ‘appropriate’
definition of natural resources
by discussion.
Use thematic maps of the world
to investigate pupils’ enquiry
questions eg possible factors
influencing population density
(environmental determinism)
Make a diagram summarising
the interrelationships
discovered
Use an atlas for clues to match
location cards to resource cards
The social determination of
resources. The role of land,
labour and capital in different
modes of production.
Resources and the global
economy – global flows of
energy and materials ecological footprints.
Population density and
migration as a response to past
and present levels of
development and
underdevelopment
What are the effects on the environment
of this resource issue?
Choose a topical resource
issue.
Provide text based resources
expressing arguments for and
against
Pupils highlight facts and
opinions in different colours;
identify interested parties,
create a matrix.
Plot resource issue locations on
a world map.
Debrief
Is the war in Iraq a war about
oil?
See examples in next three
slides
Pupils engage in ideology
critique. They seek to
understand the power and
interests shaping the views
expressed in each text based
resource.
Bomb before you buy
Naomi Klein, The Guardian, 14.4.03
So what is a recessionary, growth-addicted superpower to do? How
about upgrading from Free Trade Lite which wrestles market
access through backroom bullying at the WTO, to Free Trade
Supercharged, which seizes new markets on the battlefields of preemptive wars? After all negotiations with sovereign countries can
be hard. For easier to tear into the country, occupy it, then rebuild it
the way you want. Bush hasn’t abandoned free trade, as some
have claimed, he just has a new doctrine “Bomb before you buy”. . .
. Investors are openly predicting that once privatisation takes root in
Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will be forced to compete by
privatising their oil
Its all about control, not the price of petrol
Mark Almond, New Statesman, 7.4.03
• US strategists seek a monopoly of the global oil market as a
means of disciplining potential future rivals
• Doctrine of pre-emption carried out in Iraq implements a strategy
designed to prevent challenges to US hegemony in the post
cold war era.
• Real targets are outside the Arab world – China and India – they
could challenge US hegemony but are also dependent on oil
imports as their economies and populations grow
• US plans for post-war Iraq include privatisation of the oil industry
• If Iran were to follow Iraq (and Central Asia) under a US
sponsored regime, China could find its oil supplies controlled by
Anglo-American companies. US could turn off Chinese
economic boom.
Causa Belli by Andrew Motion
They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket burn
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad
In a World Gone Mad
by the Beastie Boys
First the “war on terror”, now war on Iraq
We’re reaching a point where we can’t turn back
Let’s lose the guns and let’s lose the bombs
And stop the corporate contributions that they’re built
upon
Well, I’ll be sleeping on your speeches ‘til I start to snore
Cause I won’t carry guns for an oil war
Why should we study resource issues?
Locate all resource issues
studied on a world map
Which issues have/will affect
our lives?
Introduce probable and
preferable futures.
Pupils draw a cartoon of their
preferable future and write their
own definition of sustainable
development.
• values and attitudes
• global interdependence
• citizenship
Locate all past and potential future
wars which may be about
resources on a world map?
Are resource wars likely to be more
frequent in the future?
Sustainable alternatives to oil
based economies.
In what ways can global
governance (multilateralism)
promote sustainable development
and so lessen the likelihood of
resource wars?
Opportunities for
critical school geography
• The key stage 3 strategy in foundation subjects that seeks to
improve motivation, engagement and thinking skills
• The creativity initiative that seeks to engage, motivate and
interest pupils - ‘be surprising, controversial, topical, and
provocative’
• The geography and history curriculum project that seeks to
make the subjects responsive to a changing world – critical
approaches to knowledge; processes that shape economy,
society and environment, critical engagement with issues, global
citizenship, futures perspectives; relevance
• The pilot GCSE to reflect changes in the subject
• The geography matters strand on the QCA website.
http://john.huckle.org.uk