Fostering Geographical Wisdom: A Case for Improving Links Between School and University

Geography and for the advancement of ‘Public Geographies’

Benjamin Major

In this short article, I wish to put forward the case for building opportunities for knowledge
transfer between university and school geography departments and the wider public and for
developing more public participatory geographies. I begin by considering the gap that exists
between school and university level geography and argue that the subject remains important for
the development of a deep understanding (and furthermore, a wisdom) about ourselves and our
home planet. After a brief discussion of what geographical wisdom comprises I go on to assert
that the path that leads towards this wisdom is at once a solitary and a collaborative affair and that
the importance of creating opportunities for this collaboration to occur, in the guise of public
participatory geographies, is crucial. Next, I take a further look at what public geographies might
entail, and see how it bears relation to Michael Burawoy’s notion of ‘public sociologies’ and the
distinction between the ‘traditional’ and ‘organic’ forms of such work. I then examine two
projects that have already attempted a more ‘visible’, ‘organic’ participatory kind of geography to
see how theory has been put into action. Finally I comment on the future prospects for increased
collaboration between universities, schools and the wider public and the role that professional
bodies such as the GA and RGS might have to play in this.

Keywords: Public Geographies, Knowledge Transfer, Living Geography, Wisdom

Geography has an established place in the school curriculum, providing what has been deemed an
essential component of the cultural literacy of children and young people in England. However,
there is much evidence that shows a widening gap between university and school geography (see
Castree et al, 2007) and this gap presents us with some cause for concern. Although the discipline
manages to maintain a healthy intake of students at degree level, it is questionable that this will
remain the case if the discipline cannot stake out and hold its ground in the school curricula.
Academics, certainly, have a vested interest in ensuring that geography preserves a strong identity.
As Castree et al write, “Intellectually it is, to say the least, careless to allow ‘school geography’ to
be shaped and governed without awareness or concern from the academy… Make no mistake,
unless geography can confidently claim its disciplinary focus and value it will suffer a
consequential loss of young people wanting to study it beyond 14 years - and, indeed, head teachers
wanting to go on even offering it as an option”. (2007, pp. 130) But what is really lost when the
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(ever changing) discipline that we have demarcated with the name ‘geography’ vanishes from our
curricula? Isn’t it the case that many of the issues central to geographical enquiry would anyhow be
covered in say, a course on citizenship, or education for sustainable development? Perhaps they
could. However, the advantage that geography has over these new subjects surely has something to
do with its maturity (the fact that climate, migration and development have been part of its focus for
decades) and the fact that geography can encompass these issues within (what I would argue to be)
a more holistic framework that captures not just the interdependence of things in the world but of
perspectives on that world. To defend the subject of geography is to defend a type of geographical
wisdom that leaves us impoverished if we are not in possession of it.

Wisdom, and not least what Alun Morgan (2006) calls ‘geographical wisdom’, is somewhat the
apex of all thinking and learning. It is a type of knowledge that according to Staudinger and Werner
(quoted in Morgan, 2006, pp. 339) deals with “important and/or difficult matters of life and the
human condition”, is closely associated with good “judgement and advice” and has an
“extraordinary scope, depth, and balance” (see Morgan’s paper for more characteristics of wisdom
and for a broader discussion on this topic in general). The case for advancing geography, and for
revitalizing or firming up the links between pre-16 geography and university geography then, does
not merely concern the future of geography as a subject that has the possibility of teaching us some
more or less interesting facts about the world. It concerns the propagation of a broad, deep and
lifelong knowledge (a wisdom) that can help us to understand our place on the Earth and our
connections (not to mention our dis-connections and the reasons that lie behind these) with others.
Indeed, I do not think that Morgan goes too far when he states that wisdom (along with creativity,
compassion and empathy, which are really traits of wisdom) or a ‘post-formal’ level of thinking is
exactly what is “needed to address the constellation of crises affecting the contemporary world of
psychological, societal and ecological dysfunction”. (2006, pp. 348) The case for geographical
‘knowledge transfer’ (where the transference works both ways, from the academy to the public
domain and back again) is thus a case for a steady, cumulative and truly collaborative progression
towards that final point of knowledge- wisdom, and the valuing of our relationships with others and
with the Earth that wisdom brings with it. As Morgan correctly insists, this is “a lifelong process
and not merely something which can be achieved during the limited period which people spend in
schools”. The route to wisdom is at once a journey that each much tread by him or herself, but at the
same time it is an inescapably collaborative and mutual affair. This is why we must create
opportunities in which we can share our experiences, thoughts and ideas; or to put it in other words,
to ‘transfer’ knowledges between academies and the publics.

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At this point, it might be useful to ask: to what extent (if any) has geography engaged with its
(perceived) publics in the past? In his first report on the ‘rise’ of public geographies, the late
Duncan Fuller compared this new ‘field’ (which is more than just a field) to the recent emergence
of ‘public sociologies’ that have been championed most persistently by Michael Burawoy.
Although public sociology always involves engagement with people outside of the academy, the
level and depth of this engagement varies and Burawoy identifies two principal subforms of public
sociology. The traditional kind encompasses books that have appeal beyond an academic
readership, along with newspaper articles and column writing. Here the public is always the
recipient and beneficiary of this knowledge (though this is surely not to say that they are always
passive, uncritical receivers). Another kind, termed ‘organic public sociology’, concerns that work
in which the public are actively involved with the research, that is, work undertaken “in close
connection with a visible, thick, active, local and often counter-public”. (Burawoy, cited in Fuller,
2008, pp. 836) Thus such sociology can be thought of as a dialogue, a “process of mutual
education”. It is not so surprising to learn that such organic public sociology is in fact widespread,
but the problem lies in its invisibility. Largely undocumented, this interaction, this transformational
dialogue gets lost in the published results of research. To make public sociologies truly public it
would seem hitherto hidden process must get pushed to the forefront. Much of what we have been
saying about sociology is at least as true in the discipline of geography. Traditional public
geographies might perhaps be characterised by long-standing geographical magazines such as
National Geographic that continue to enjoy a large readership, or by Michael Palin’s enjoyable (but
not exactly, shall we say, critical) overseas exploits. ‘Organic public geography’ on the other hand,
is arguably even less visible than its sociological counterpart. For more on organic geographies see
the collaborative paper, ‘Organic public geographies: ‘making the connection’’ (Hawkins et al,
forthcoming). To cut the story short we might want to consider Fuller’s own summary of what these
types of geographies will entail. He emphasises that, “public geographies are and will (need to) be
overt, visible, authenticating, recognizing, unrestrained, communicative, engaging, and necessarily
outreaching. Public geographies are and will be about interaction and conversation”. (Fuller, 2008,
pp. 838) These provisos for a genuinely public geography should certainly provide a guiding light
for any future participatory public geography, but are there any concrete examples of projects where
this kind of participatory approach has already been (at least partially) tried out? There are indeed a
small number but I will focus here on two- the ‘Mywalks’ project, led by Northumbria University,
and the ‘Rescue Geography’ research project. Let us look first though at the emerging approach to
school geography called ‘Living Geography’, as this will help us to put Mywalks into some context.

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According to the Geographical Association, Living Geography is a new take on school geography
that “is concerned with perceptive and deep description of the real world. It seeks explanations about
how the world works and helps us to think about alternative futures”. It is about observing change in
our environment, about seeing the everyday in new ways and, I would add, the advancement of the
kind of worldly wisdom we were earlier discussing. Wisdom is more than simply knowledge,
because it has an affective dimension that has its beginning in experience (in ‘Being-in-the-world’)
and finds its end in creative, compassionate and caring action. Indeed, it is hard to image a non-
geographical (or non-historical) kind of wisdom because all of our experiences and our actions take
place precisely in places (and times). As I see it, Living Geography begins with such experience and
builds upon it. The Mywalks project is a terrific example of this approach in action. Its stated aim is
“to get ‘the publics’ [sic] to engage with their immediate urban (but not necessarily just urban)
environments and geographies” (Fuller et al, 2008, pp. 82). It is a resource originally used with
undergraduates but has the potential to be used in schools and by the wider public. The participant in
the project takes a walk through a familiar place and takes photos along the way that can then be
uploaded to the Mywalks website. “The photos can be of anything… they like, hate, want to change
(and so on) about the environments they pass through (along with any explanation of their feelings)
for display, comment and analysis” (Ibid. pp. 83). Dialogue is encouraged by the ability for viewers
to add their own comments on the photo and contributions are certainly not restricted to photos-
audio and video files are also welcomed. Mywalksmaps, a more recent addition to the site, aims to
“reflect mobility and movement in walk-making” (italics in original) and allows users to highlight
their routes on a map and add their images, sounds and videos at the appropriate places en route.

Although, as already stated, most users of this resource have been undergraduate students, its
potential to be used by schools has been demonstrated by the input of pupils and staff from a
Newcastle based primary school (for more about this see the article by Fuller et al, 2008). In the
Mywalks project then, we see something approaching the sort of ‘organic public geography’ that we
saw sketched out earlier. In the words of its initiators, “Mywalks is… about reaching out to people
as public and/or participatory geographers, getting ‘the publics’ involved in thinking
geographically… and making links between university and school geography and beyond, as living
geographies.” (Ibid. pp. 82) This is not to say that the project has achieved perfection, however.
Aside from getting the sense that this project hasn’t yet reached a large audience (a detail perhaps
attributable to its youth), one alarm bell that is raised for this author is one that is similarly raised by
any phenomenologically orientated approach to learning and teaching geography. Put simply, there
is a danger that taking part in Mywalks leaves us, as it were, too ‘experience bound’ (see Morgan
and Lambert, 2005, pp. 99 for a short treatment of this issue). As we have asserted, experience is
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important and furthermore is perhaps the first step towards learning, but our experience is always
incomplete and must be complemented by exposure to more and larger perspectives (otherwise we
wouldn’t need a teacher). However, this remains only a danger. Good teaching will mean that pupils
taking part in Mywalks (or any similar Living Geography project) will be able to take forward their
impressions and observations to the next stage, and this is where the importance of geography as a
subject (a systematized body of knowledge) comes into play. Healthy discourse amongst peers and
critical comparison with prevalent attitudes should put pupils on the path to that collaborative,
transformative and ultimately empowering enterprise that is the pursuit of wisdom.

Moving on, ‘Rescue Geography’ is a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research
Council that has been similarly inspired by Fuller’s call for more participatory geographies. The
project leaders write that “the idea of Rescue Geography is to 'rescue' local people's understandings
of an area before it is redeveloped, just as rescue archaeologists go into an area to record
archaeological traces which are threatened by new building” (Jones and Evans, 2008). The rescue is
undertaken primarily by the means of walking interviews- a sort of ‘guided tour’ given by research
participants, a technique which, according to the authors, “produces rich insights into how people
value particular places.” (Ibid.) Though this research method is not in itself uniquely original
(Anderson, 2004 for example, carried out a research technique he called ‘talking whilst walking’ or
‘conversations in place’ in his study of the knowledge and lifeworlds of environmental activists)
what is striking about this project is that audio recordings of the interviews (along with photos and
other media assembled on these walks) are available to download on the project website and as such
are ‘visible’ in a way that the materials collected during research are most often not. The other
innovative aspect of this project was the use of GPS technologies to complement the qualitative
methods used- “the precise matching of qualitative data and spatial context… allows researchers to
give a ‘voice’ to the otherwise impersonal traces left by GPS tracking.” (Ibid.) At the end of the
project (or the end of the funded period, at least) there was an exhibition of photos that had been
taken by a collaborating artist during the project and additionally provided the chance for people to
engage with Google Earth, which had been projected onto one of the walls.

Despite these and other great starts made in the direction of participatory public geographies, the
number of people that these projects reach is obviously quite small and by themselves they are
hardly likely to change the public image of geography. The professional bodies whose remit it is to
promote and advance geography in the public realm (the Royal Geographical Society with IBG in
the UK) and to further the learning and teaching of geography in schools and colleges (The
Geographical Association) both have a part to play, I would maintain, in pushing this agenda. If
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geographical wisdom is as important as I have argued it to be earlier in this article (to the extent that
such wisdom is vital to living carefully and sustainably on this Earth) then it must be regarded as
something worth fostering not only in the short period when an individual is at school, but
throughout an entire life. Geographical knowledges in the university, school and public realm
certainly need not be seen as strictly differentiated domains of knowledge (considered as more or
less accurate, more or less wise) but as significant perspectives, voices in a common, exhilarating
conversation about our future(s). I see no reason, for example, why schools cannot use the materials
collated in the ‘Rescue Geographies’ project as a resource for investigating changes in the built
environment. I see no reason why the MyWalks website should not draw a huge popular audience-
just imagine a world map completely crammed with the intimate details of people’s walk to work or
school, including photographs and audio recordings. After all, what seems unremarkable and
everyday to one person may count as extraordinary to someone else living in a very different place.
Just think- even momentous and famous historical walks could be documented in this way. All in
all, with the advent of the internet, the possibilities in this area are undeniably vaster than what has
as yet been realised. I think that it befits both the GA and RGS (and any other organisation,
worldwide, committed to geography education) to make more use of the internet in exactly this way
and to consider how they can introduce this interactive element, this opportunity for active inter-
generational, inter-cultural dialogue, into their next website redesigns.

Bibliography

Anderson, J. (2004) ‘Talking whilst walking: a geographical archaeology of knowledge’, Area, 36, 3, 254 - 261

Castree, N., Fuller, D and Lambert, D. (2007) ‘Geography without borders’, Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers, 32, 2, 129 – 132

Fuller, D. (2008) ‘Public geographies: taking stock’, Progress in Human Geography, 32, 6, 834 – 844

Fuller, D., Askins, K., Mowl, G., Jeffries, M. and Lambert, D. (2008) ‘Mywalks: Fieldwork and Living Geographies’,
Teaching Geography

Hawkins, H., Sacks, S., Cook, I., Rawling, E., Griffiths, H., Swift, D., Evans, J., Rothnie, G., Wilson, J., Williams, A.,
Feenay, K., Gordon, L., Prescott, H., Murphy, C., Allen, D., Mitchell, T., Wheeldon, R., Roberts, M., Robinson, G.,
Flaxman, P., Fuller, D., Lovell, T., et al. (forthcoming) Organic public geographies: ‘making the connection’, Antipode.

Jones, P. and Evans, J. 2008. Rescue Geography [online]. [Accessed 5th Jan 2009]. Available from:
<http://www.rescuegeography.org.uk>

Morgan, A. (2006) ‘Developing Geographical Wisdom: Post-formal Thinking About, and Relating To, the World’,
International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 15, 4, 336 – 352

Morgan, J. and Lambert, D. (2005) Geography: Teaching School Subjects 11-19. London and New York: Routledge