Changes in Geography

by Pat Martin

It is not really suprising that problems crop up on the Geography Department from time to time. Perhaps Geography is too ambitious as a subject. Its subject matter ranges from rock formations to the philosophy of underdevelopment, and somehow it seeks to present that sort of breadth in a systematic and coherent way. Because Geography is so wide-ranging, it is very difficult to come to any agreement over just what it is all about.

Least agreed of all are the staff of the Geography Department. Each course is stamped with the style and beliefs of the person who teaches it — which once again dismisses the idea that university teaching is 'objective' i.e. (detached and reliant upon the cold, hard facts). Each staff member has pursued his/her own interest in the field of Geography. Now this should lead to a great deal of diversity, yet this doesn't seem to be the trend, in fact, a certain narrowness is coming to prevail. If I had to point to any one reason for this, I would look closely at one of the aims of the Department as stated by its Head Prof. Franklin which is: 'the training of graduates for business and government'.

That little statement says a good deal. It means for a start that a lot of teaching and a lot of the assessment is geared towards achieving that aim. In the light of that, many of the liberal catch-phrases about 'the drawing out of the human person', 'the discovery of man and his world', 'the free and open pursuit of knowledge' and all the other grand things that education is alleged to be about, tend to lose a lot of their credibility. What one is taught is not geared towards all those fine things — its purpose is more stunting and more mundane.

There are several areas where this trend to narrowness is becoming evident. The style of lecturing that is coming to predominate on the human courses is one. The fact that this is the last year a course on Asia is to be taught is regrettable. The Department will be so much the poorer for the loss of Keith Buchanan's scholarship, and students will lose an invaluable opportunity to closely study alternative ideas and approaches. There is of course more to his resignation than that — but any more comment would be best made elsewhere.

Related again to the problem of just what the teaching of Geography aims at is the statistics requirements for most of the human courses. Most Geography students readily acknowledge that statistics requirements are tedious, boring and of little value, but the Department insists upon having them taught. The irrelevance of statistics is probably only matched by the irrelevance of the practical courses, especially at stage I and stage 2. They serve no purpose whatsoever — their only justification seems to be that Geography can then claim that it is a science and therefore it becomes entitled to far larger monetary grants than an ordinary Arts Department.

This sort of irrelevance has unfortunately come to dominate some courses as a whole. Urban Geography at Stage 2 is a good case in point. Subject material consists of either shopping survey results or outdated models, so one never really comes to grips with the real problems of urban structures and processes. When the importance of urban living to all of us is considered, that sort of neglect is inexcusable.

Despite the disturbing overall trend of the Department, there are some hopeful signs. One lies in the reasonably good level of staff-student relations as a whole. In fact, it was on the initiative of one staff member, Gordon Carmichael, that a staff-student Liason Committee was set up this year. Its early efforts have been encouraging, but the backdrop against which it must work means that the odds are against its having any real success. This backdrop is the non-democratic character of the university itself. This university is as hierarchical a structure as can be found anywhere, and despite the patching-up of problems that committees tend to do, beneath it all the basic conflicts remain — which is not a very bright outlook for our newly-formed committee. Nevertheless, what the committee has done so far has been encouraging — the three staff members, Gordon Carmichael, Michael Crozier and John Kirby certainly don't display any reluctance to act on behalf of students' interests. Two matters have already brought some action. One involves the exclusion of a That girl from a stage 3 Monsoon Asia course because she hadn't fulfilled the required stage 2 pre-requisites. Other students had been allowed to continue at stage 3 without passing all of stage 2, so the reasons given for her exclusion were interesting. Prof. Franklin, Head of the Department, reasoned to the effect that 'Geography is her majoring subject, and because she will be getting a job on the strength of that degree, its important that her major be up to standard.' The Deputy Vice-Chancellor, when I approached him about it, gave a somewhat different reason — 'her academic record is not of a sufficiently high standard'. Prof. Buchanan who is running the course, doesn't much care about either employer's criterion or academic records, and was quite happy to have her take the course if she wanted to. Its good to see the Committee has taken up her case, but it probably is too late now to have any effect.

Staff and students in the Department seem to get on reasonably well — a successful social organised by the Committee in the first term probably helped and another is planned, due in a couple of weeks time. This sort of activity, while helpful (and intoxicating) in the short term, can be unproductive in the long-run unless it goes hand-in-hand with rising student awareness of just what the teaching of Geography is all about. Because there is no doubt that as students pass through the Department, their outlooks are partly shaped by the people there they come in contact with, the Department therefore has a responsibility to spell out clearly to its students just where it is going, what its teaching is all about, and what its aims really are.

Appendix: Members of the Committee

Staff: Gordon, Carmichael, Mike Crozier, John Kirby.

Students: Brent Lewis, Helena Barwick Pat Martin, Janice Cox, Neville Wynn, Rozellia Boland, Robin Moen.