In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

READING LANDSCAPES AND WALKING THE STREETS  2 READING LANDSCAPES AND WALKING THE STREETS: GEOGRAPHY AND THE VISUAL Locomotion should be slow, the slower the better, and be often interrupted by leisurely halts to sit on vantage points and stop at question marks. —Carl O. Sauer, “The Education of a Geographer” Many of us were introduced to geography by maps on classroom walls or copies of National Geographic in waiting rooms. Curriculum reform of the 1960s and 1970s replaced history and geography within the broader category “social studies,” and in turn, students’ knowledge of geography began to plummet, according to some studies. My own educational experience reflects this national trend: the only geography textbook and geography lessons I remember were in the fourth grade, when I chose to study Chile and had to memorize its imports, exports, and annual rainfall. After about 1968, I didn’t receive any direct instruction in geography. In Great Britain, alternatively, geography has never disappeared as a school subject and is, in fact, a popular and important degree for university students. On the University of Leeds campus in Yorkshire, for example, geography has its own large five-story building (see fig. 2.1), not uncommon among the many universities in the U.K. offering degrees in geography . Since the size and stature of buildings indicates much about how the culture values the work that goes on there, it’s safe to say that geography is a highly regarded discipline. The Leeds School of Geography is one of the largest geography departments in British Higher Education, with 230 undergraduates recruited each year, and a teaching, research, and support staff of nearly sixty personnel (School of Geography). One might suggest that Britain is more interested in geography because READING LANDSCAPES AND WALKING THE STREETS  of colonialism—Brittania ruled the waves, and its subjects needed to know the scope of such rule. For England and the British isles, national geography is a more manageable subject given the relatively small size of space compared to the U.S. or Australia, the enormous colonies. In the U.S., a national geography curriculum may seem more daunting; thus students are reduced to memorizing the capitals of the fifty states, a curricular experience so well known it is the subject of a television commercial for breakfast cereal. Geography’s status in U.S. education is a direct result of the ideologies of space produced and reproduced in the large land mass that makes up the lower forty-eight. The sheer size and power of the U.S. give its people a very different sense of space than citizens of small countries of Europe, Central America, or Africa, often surrounded by enemies past and present. Ideologies of space in this culture, especially those of the West, reproduce a false sense of protection in large stretches of land. Another layer to our spatial ideologies is Woodrow Wilson’s policy of isolationism and the reluctant entry of the U.S. into World War II, a memory that still lingers for many Europeans. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have made homeland security a top priority in a world where only 11 to 15 percent of Americans have passports —a telling statistic. Finally, U.S. corporations see the world as their Fig. 2.1. School of Geography building at the University of Leeds, U.K. Photo by Randy Blackburn. READING LANDSCAPES AND WALKING THE STREETS  profit-making oyster, but most Americans have no good reason to learn about other people, places, and cultures. Only when the term “global economy” entered the mainstream media did U.S. educators begin to take a hard look at geography education. Approximately a decade after the claims that schoolchildren could not read or write,1 the media began reporting on survey and test results showing that college students guessed wildly on geography tests and were unable to read a map, identify important countries, or name boundary rivers or mountains. With the collapse of several subjects into “social studies,” young Americans had become geographically illiterate. Surveys confirmed that nearly 70 percent of all secondary students had had no formal coursework in geography, and the media were eager to report the most egregious examples of ignorance, for example, the belief that Canada was a state (“Teachers Lament”). In 1985, in response to “deterioration of geographic knowledge,” two professional organizations set forth new guidelines for the teaching of geography in elementary and secondary schools (Shabad), and Congress designated a “National Geography Awareness Week” in...

Share