My son was involved in an altercation in a pub. The person squaring up to him delivered the devastating put-down: “Anyway, you look like a teacher”.
My son was philosophical. It could have been worse, he reflected; his accuser might have specified the subject.
He had dodged the bullet fired at a minibus-load of rather more famous people, including (the list is not exhaustive) Chris Martin, Nicholas Cage, Lionel Messi and Jeremy Corbyn. Each has been accused of looking like a geography teacher.
What do they have in common - a dissonant dress sense? A vaguely disappointed, “I’m not here for my own benefit” expression?
A parent on Mumsnet told of how for Hallowe’en she dressed her 18-month-old as a geography teacher. Really? What did that involve, other than a cagoule in place of a cape?
There is something more insidious at work.
In the minds of some, there is a section of hell roped off for geography teachers.
One teenage character says in the novel The Harvest: “All teachers are tossers anyway but geography teachers are somethin’ special.”
The butt of jokes
The offspring of geography teachers have a particular cross to bear. My son still remembers the ridicule he received on a road trip with a friend’s family: having grown up believing that car journeys required an unending narrative on passing topographical features, he discovered that this was not universal.
Another character in The Harvest observes that it takes “a very special kind of talent … to make such a subject as geography dull”. But the problem is not who teaches, it’s what we have to teach.
I once found my son working on two GCSE projects: one was on the origins of the Second World War; the other was about the distribution of litter in Swanage.
We do what we can to avoid the obvious geography jibes.
Wynn Kapit’s Geography Coloring Book is best kept in the restricted area of the library. It contains such advice as: “Use fine-pointed felt-tips or colored pencils. Do not use crayons. Twelve colors, including a medium gray, should give you enough variety. Some plates will require more than twelve colors. In those cases you will have to use the same color more than once.”
The writer goes on: “The coloring process will tend to be more meaningful if you know something about whatever it is you are coloring.” Quite.
Geography teachers strive, against the prejudices of syllabus and society, and despite the obfuscations of postmodern academic geography, to breathe genuine intellectual life and real-world challenge into their unique subject.
In a world in which nationalism and climate change denial are in the ascendant, we need a geographically-informed society more than ever.
In 1987, British physical geographer David Stoddart sounded a clarion-call to restore faith in the subject we profess. His paper remains simply the best defence of geography you could read.
So I dedicate this blog to those making up what Andrew Hill Clark once called that “special, indispensable class” of educated people, the geographers. Beards optional.
Dr Kevin Stannard is the director of innovation and learning at the Girls’ Day School Trust. He tweets as @KevinStannard1
For more columns by Kevin, visit his back catalogue
Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow TES on Twitter and like TES on Facebook
