Geography

Studying the world around you...

Geography. Parents reading this will instantly think of mountains and streams and maps and compasses. Indeed, during a recent stock take, we were most excited to find treasures from the past, in the form of giant cloth maps which in days gone by would have adorned Geography classroom walls. However, Geography today is much bigger than that. Geography is the world around you, wherever you are. The introduction of technology at the end of the last century has enabled Geographers to handle large sets of data, and in class we are now able to use maps such as World Mapper and Hans Rosling’s videos using Gapminder, both of which use statistical data to challenge preconceived ideas about how the contemporary world looks. This use of data has resulted in Geographers asking questions which enable them to consider the role of various influencing factors which form the complex world in which we live. Whilst we believe that place knowledge is still important, an observer of a typical lesson in Geography today would be much more likely to find our pupils employing their ‘thinking skills’. This is a technique which encourages pupils to think for themselves, outside of the box, to realise that the answer is not always black or white, and that usually a variety of ideas or concepts can make a contribution. We no longer merely take our Y13 to Berlin, via a very long coach journey! In the last 10 years, the Geographical interest of our pupils has led to trips in Europe where we have had exciting visits to Iceland and to Sicily, Italy; a cultural visit to Morocco in Africa; an all-encompassing visit to the West coast of the USA taking in the cities of San Francisco and Las Vegas via the majestic Grand Canyon and the famous Route 66; and the furthest we have travelled was to Eastern Asia, to the fast changing country of China. We are now busily preparing our next trip to a country which is constantly in the news for its changing political, cultural and economic landscape, Cuba. Our aim in the department is to not only instill both a love for the subject and the need to know more, but also to encourage our pupils to get out and see. To that end, we annually take our classes out of the classroom to Formby, the Lake District, to Manchester, Bolton and to Devon. As Michael Palin wisely commented: “Geography is the key to our future.”

Iceland