Dr. Daniel C. Edelson, the vice president for education programs at the National Geographic Society has written a nice piece suggesting that geographic education become a priority for the students he calls Generation G, the "G" standing for "global." What do you think?
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I think that just calling for geographic education is enough. I think we should call for *good* geographic education. School manages to make geography *BORING* (as I well know since just yesterday I tried to convince a student that she didn’t hate geography–just the class). In the age of Google Earth, daily city photo blogs, and ubiquitous web-cams, why oh why is geography still taught in such a BORING fashion?
Seems to me that once they started to make make learning not boring is when we started producing so many ignorant graduates – and ignorant teachers. Dumb it down, make it into a game, and use electronics and perhpas some marginal students might make a little progress: but you will not serve the students who want to learn. Letting the bored student set the standards doesn’t make sense to me.
I agree that we want “good” geographic education, which by definition would not be boring. The problem we face in the U.S. is that it is usually not taught by geographers, since the advent of social studies.
I do not think the problem is mainly about the choice of electronic information sources used in class. Someone who really knows geography can make a simple wall map come alive. A teacher without a strong geographic education who is thrown into geography class will not be able to do much with the flashiest of new geo-toys.
I agree whole-heartedly that geography needs to be fun and exciting. It doesn’t need to have all the flashy geo-toys, but denying the kids their interactive resources is not a way to get them hooked on geography. The online interactive maps are a key component to this generation. Even though many teachers want to ignore the fact they are teaching a generation of digital natives, they cannot limit their own creativity to simply a wall map. Besides, our green world cannot sustain printing maps and resources for kids. Especially when the world keeps changing, updating is so tedious with all the constant things thrown at us! Kids need to create things, present things, and keep up with the demands their future employers will expect from them. My students are empowered by geography by keeping their retention of location up while building news maps, political hypothesis powerpoints of tracking news in relation to history. They have even developed maps that you can click on a country and they have downloaded music to the region. It is amazing what the technology and flashy maps and programs have done for my kids. They are so inspired about both physical and political regions it has made me put my faith in the geo-gadgets that are available to them. It is also accessible to them from the home…this is so important! It keeps them going even after the teacher expires.