Frontiers in Geographical Teaching: The Madingley Lectures for 1963

Abstract

Since 1951 Cambridge University has used Madingley Hall for summer residential courses to bring teachers into contact with newest ideas in various professional fields. In 1963 RichardJ. Chorley and Peter Haggett, both then lecturers in geography at Cambridge, were directors of a course for geography teachers in training colleges, grammar schools, and similar institutions. In this book seventeen lectures given by fifteen British geographers are published, and whole symposium is summarized in a retrospect by editors. Chorley and Haggett were careful to avoid laying down a party line to by followed by lecturers, or to do any editing that would give a false sense of unity to published chapters. The differences and contradictions characteristic of a rapidly changing field of study are presented just as they were expressed. If teachers in audience were anything like teachers elsewhere they were probably somewhat bewildered and frustrated by lack of a unified point of view. Scholars world over take a certain pride in special quality of their own insights which must, therefore, be expressed somewhat differently from those of other scholars. But teachers who come to seek guidance find that in end each must make his own decision between regional and topical approach, between insisting on field study or depending on some one else's field observations, between approaching geography as a descriptive art or as a rigorous science-or even between teaching any kind of geography or no geography at all. As in similar books produced in other countries, there are contradictions and differences here, some fundamental and some arising from a failure to agree on word meanings. The book is divided into three parts. The seven chapters in Part 1 deal with changing philosophy of geography, and new concepts in geomorphology and climatology, in population, social, economic, and historical geography. The six chapters in Part 2 deal with techniques, including quantitative techniques and field methods. The four chapters in Part 3 deal with teaching, in older universities and newer universities, in training colleges and technical colleges, and in schools. The final chapter, by Haggett and Chorley, suggests elements of unity that can be found in symposium, offers a forward look at possibility of greater use of theoretical models in teaching of geography, and outlines problem of lag between newer ideas of scholars and outmoded content of many geography courses. The editors identify seven major themes, each of which is touched on in several of chapters. The first is regional theme. E. A. Wrigley disposes of regional geography by defining it as description of local associations of people and place, as exemplified by work of Vidal de la Blache and French regional school. The industrial revolution, says Wrigley, makes examination of local interconnections of a rural society with its habitat irrelevant, for now regional differences are related to varying accessibility of places to major markets. According to this definition functional region is not a region, nor can varying patterns of accessibility be measured regionally-which is a kind of verbal subtlety that might not come through clearly to ordinary teacher. On other hand, D. Timms says that the recognition of valid regions is basis of geographical research, and Haggett provides a challenging discussion of importance of scale, or 443