As this is the end of the Australian academic year, I feel that is an opportune moment to share my geographical experiences in a neat, condensed manner. Geography in Australian state schools is seemingly an invisible subject. Many schools I have been into are stressing the importance of independence in learning and pupils taking control of their learning but yet many seem to be neglecting the subject in which you can really engage with the world around. Upon several conversations with senior school pupils, they had no clear idea of what geography is and how it could aid their learning. When I went into a little more detail, the pupils were genuinely enthused by the possible topics they could encounter and really wanted to know more about their own country and the rest of the world. It seems a shame that in such a geographically wonderful country, there is so little emphasis on the natural and man made aspects of such a diverse country. This attitude permeated through senior schools down through middle ages towards primary schooling, where geography was ‘embedded’ within SOSE and had very little impact on the pupils’ learning.
The national curriculum is supposedly going to cure this issue, however, the implementation of the curriculum has been stalled due to disagreements over it’s content between states. Part of me wants to suggest that it is a case of too many cooks in each state wanting to have their say, but having seen the draft of various subjects’ curriculum, I do feel that they (the curriculum) were quite confused and stuck between appeasing several different groups of thinking and pedagogical styles whilst trying to condense as much subject specific knowledge into each area, effectively doubling the workload of some pupils. There will always be disagreements about curriculum content and delivery, but I definitely feel that from being out here, the country could benefit as the current system does not really benefit geography or more importantly, it hampers the learning of interstate movement pupils, who can be caught between two different states timings and education systems.
On the positive side of geography in schools, it seems that private education is still embracing geography. The only jobs I have seen for teaching geography have been in private schools, mostly in religious denomination schools, which could be interesting regarding some geographical issues. Although it is great to see that some schools are still happy to work with geography and expose pupils to the subject, does this mean that geography could become marginalised as an elitist subject? One state school teacher I spoke to thought that geography was “too difficult for the pupils here” and that was at a reasonable inner city state school, which I found incredibly disappointing.
In regards to elitism, it does seem that many of the traditional subjects are being forced towards the private sector as state schools look towards vocational subjects and many business based subjects, something that echoes the shifts in education in the Uk over the last 5-10 years. Pupils gave me the impression that many of them were choosing electives due to the job market, many Chinese pupils I spoke to had discussed subjects at length with their parents and had opted to go down the business route to then move back to China to start businesses, which I found a fascinating point from an economic and demographic perspective for the future of Queensland and particularly Brisbane. It means that in 5-7 years there may be a mass movement from 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants’ families to move back to the Far east (China, Japan, Singapore) to start new lives, leaving Brisbane with a depleted amount of economically active people in the 18-28 age bracket. This may shift the demographic of the area considerably, or may just become another base level statistic for a different group to start moving to the area.
Geography (something that I have yet to teach in Australia!),is on the decline and will be until the new national curriculum comes into place where each SOSE subject becomes individualised and schools will require specialists of the subject. Until the point at which the curriculum becomes disagreement free, Geography will sadly continue to decline in state schools. Here is hoping that the private sector get even more pupils talking about the subject and enthused about the skills and work that geography can achieve!
Hope everyone has a lovely few weeks off over Christmas, oddly, it is the summer holidays over here now, so I am off for nearly 6 weeks!
