Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Challenges facing geography in Southeast AsiaGeography has been under siege in schools and universities in Southeast Asia (seepapers published in Malaysian Journal of Tropical Geography, Special Issue, 1990).In many countries the position of geography is declining mainly because of thewrong perception of its worth. I think the way the subject is taught is also partly tobe blamed. One cannot agree more with Unwin (1992) when he remarked that whatis taught as geography at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels, and the way itis taught, are thus absolutely central to the understanding of the social practice andacceptance (emphasis mine) of the discipline. In Indonesia, for example, Adikusomo(1990) lamented the state of geography in high schools outside Java where morethan a quarter of the geography classes was taught by teachers who had no collegetraining of any kind in geography. This situation worsened with the economic andsocial instability that followed the radical political changes after 1997. In this situation,fieldwork and other geographical knowledge and skills would not be properlytaught to geography students, if they were taught at all. It is vital that given thecomplexity of geographical studies that the subject should be taught by well-trainedspecialist teachers.Then, there is a perception that geography is a subject that merely provides a goodgeneral education with useful knowledge of the environment, and skills to aid inthat understanding. In some countries like Malaysia, history has been preferred fora proper appreciation of nationhood, and this resulted in geography being sidelinedat the upper secondary schools levels (‘O’ and ‘A’ Levels). Consequently, geographyin some secondary schools in Malaysia has ceased to exist, and geography teachershave been re-deployed to teach other subjects.One more challenge facing geography is the fact that the discipline has been integratedinto a wider course such as Social Studies (US and Singapore). In Singapore,for example, recent education reform has seen the removal of physical geographyaltogether in favour of a paper called ‘Combined Humanities’ where some aspectsof human geography integrated with history and economics form the basis of themodule. There is now a vociferous call to move back towards discipline-basedsubjects in the school curricular as the integrated approach is looked upon as antiintellectualand populist (see Gardner, 1986; Powell, 1997; Biddle, 1999). Physicalgeography will make a comeback in Singapore secondary schools in 2006.In Singapore pragmatic, economic reasons very often take precedence over purelyacademic considerations.a. There is a perception that geography is a ‘soft option’ and therefore its study willnot be crucial to the development of Singapore. Disciplines with strong business,technology, life science orientations are perceived to be the ones that will makea difference to the country. Singapore’s pragmatic approach towards manpowerplanning with obvious bias towards these subjects would sound most logical butthe consequence on geography enrolment in schools and universities is predictable.b. In many countries geography has been subsumed under two broad sciences – earthsciences and social sciences. This may possibly be the start of the marginalization133