“A strangely gullible race of people known as geologists perpetuate a set of misguided beliefs about how these rocks were formed,” says Keith, our guide. “They would have us believe that, 60 million years ago, volcanic activity beneath the Earth’s crust caused magma to erupt into the ocean where it cooled and fractured into long, hexagonal-shaped columns of basalt. This of course is a load of old nonsense. If that were true, why is it called the Giant’s Causeway?”
It occurs to me that a visit to a place like this should be the starting point for all learning. No virtual journey along the technological superhighway of educational software can compete with physically clambering over this strangely alien landscape. There is no substitute for the roar of the ocean, the tang of salt spray and an unseasonably cold wind infiltrating your nether regions. Keith’s wry anecdotes and deadpan delivery is a bonus.
Mrs Eddison and I are visiting County Antrim in Northern Ireland and following the Causeway Coastal Route from Belfast to Bushmills. Like all the best learning journeys, it is more of a physical experience than an intellectual one. Intellectual journeys are okay, but they rarely come with heart-stopping scenery, breathtaking climbs and a bottom-clenching totter along the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.
From my perch, on top of what our key stage 2 mathematicians might call a hexagonal prism, I tell Mrs Eddison that this is what all educational visits should be like. I’ve been on more than you can throw a sick bucket at and I know for a fact that places like this make for the best ones. Museums and art galleries are fine, but mostly they involve swapping a small classroom for a bigger and better-resourced one. For many children, the most memorable thing about a school trip is the gift shop.
‘Imagination smashes through indifference’
While visiting Conisbrough Castle, the inspiration for Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, a student called Ryan (known for his low boredom threshold and highly outspoken opinions) suggested some creative improvements. When I explained that standing on the battlements and raining arrows down on fellow visitors might be frowned upon, he rolled his eyes and told me that I was a sad old man who didn’t know what it was like to be a kid anymore.
Here on the Giant’s Causeway, even Ryan would have struggled to be bored. Practical science, maths, geography, history, technology, art and storytelling are alive and well and clamouring for attention. In such a habitat, even the smallest seed of curiosity will germinate and flourish; where the crust of civilisation is thinnest, imagination will always find a way to smash through the tectonic plates of indifference.
By now, Keith has gathered his little flock together and is in the middle of explaining how the Giant’s Causeway really came to be. “…Then the Irish giant Finn McCool became so angered by the taunts of the Scottish giant Benandonner that he began to tear off blocks from the Antrim coast and cast them out into the sea until they formed a path all the way to Scotland…”
Steve Eddison teaches at Arbourthorne Community Primary School in Sheffield
