A University Teacher of Geography

Abstract

Using the example of the pioneer British university teacher and economic geographer G. G. Chisholm, the author discusses qualities desirable in a university teacher of geography, considers some of the problems of teaching geography in British universities and polytechnics at the present time and indicates some directions in which further improvements may be sought. OUR Institute was founded by university teachersl yet, with a few exceptions,2 little attention has been given in Presidential Addresses or generally in the Transactions to the teaching task that occupies most of us for much of our time. It is also surprising that, in a period of expansion of universities and polytechnics, the Institute, certainly until recently, has done relatively little to stimulate discussion on the problems and the achievements of teaching geography at university level. Personally, I find it helpful to look back sometimes at the work of our predecessors, partly to absorb their experience and partly to find points of reference from which to test progress and current standards. And so I begin with an example from the past, from the first modern phase in the growth of our subject as a university discipline in Britain. George Goudie Chisholm was among the university teachers of that period. Chisholm had been born in Edinburgh in i850.3 He took degrees in the University of Edinburgh, first in philosophy in I870 and then in natural sciences in I883. By the time of his second graduation he had already commenced his career as an author, having published Switzerland: its scenery and people in i88i and The Two Hemispheres in 1882. He became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in I884 and his name appears as an author in early issues of the Scottish Geographical Magazine. Chisholm's early work was in a Glasgow publisher's office and his career as a teacher seems to date from 1895 when, at the age of 45, he moved to London and became involved in what we would now call extra-mural or extension lecturing. The Council minutes of Birkbeck College, London, for 29 June I896, include the resolution that 'a Course of Lectures on Commercial Geography in connection with the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching be arranged for the Autumn and Winter Terms at a cost of ?25 per term', and Mr Chisholm was engaged for this task.4 In I898 Birkbeck College agreed to continue the lectures on the understanding that a grant of ?50 be promised by the Technical Education Board. His work at Birkbeck continued until I908 when, after one year of lectures from L. W. Lyde, J. F. Unstead took up an appointment in geography in I909 at a salary of ?65 per annum. Chisholm, meanwhile, had played an active part in lecturing in geography in other places: he became secretary of the London University Board of Studies in Geography in I903 and played an influential part in the Board's work in developing geographical studies in the University. He was in close contact with Mackinder at this time and one can imagine his regular journeys by suburban train from his homes in Camberwell, Balham and later in Upper Tooting to the University head-