专题一：Geography for life national geography standards, 1994.docx

1、Geography for life: national geography standards, 1994.AUTHOR: O.F.G. SitwellThe magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited.AUTHOR ABSTRACTGeography for Life is a re

2、sponse to the call by the American Congress in 1994 for a major reorganization of the curriculum of that countrys public schools. It was prepared, jointly, by every major American organization that is committed to the practice of geography in either its professional or popular manifestations. It pro

3、vides both foundation and frame for what pupils would learn, as geography, from kindergarten to Grade 12. Though seemingly academic, the curriculum is structured around the acquisition of a series of skills that could be acquired by the full range of students. In acquiring those skills the students

4、would meet the broad objectives characteristically set by legislation for their school systems. To obtain the full potential offered by National Geography Standards, which could easily be adapted to the Canadian situation, would require the active co-operation of provincial departments of education,

5、 faculties of education, and university departments of geography. In 1994, the American Congress enacted Goals 2000: The Educate America Act (Public Law 103-227). Among its provisions, the Act identified a small number of subjects that were to form the core of the curriculum in the countrys schools.

6、 Along with English, history, mathematics, and science, geography was identified as being one of these core subjects. Geography for Life: National Geography Standards, 1994 (hereafter NGS) is the collective response shown to this Act of the Congress by the American Geographical Society, the Associat

7、ion of American Geographers, the National Council for Geographic Education, and the National Geographic Society. In other words, this publication represents a joint attempt by every major organization in the United States that is committed to the field of geography, in either its professional or pop

8、ular manifestations, to provide those in charge of schools with guidelines as to what should be taught as geography.(FN1) Behind the seemingly instantaneous response lies more than a decade of preparation. It began with the publication of Guidelines to Geographic Education, K-12 in 1984. There follo

9、wed a programme of development managed by a committee representing the geographical organizations identified above. Given the widespread conviction that any project designed by a committee will be condemned to futility by the compromises entailed by its genesis, not the least surprising feature of N

10、GS is its internal coherence. Written by a team of eight authors, its various drafts were closely examined by those who attended nine public hearings, each held in a different city, as well as by a small army of professionals both inside and outside the academic community. It thus seems that geograp

11、hy, notoriously the most ill-defined of the traditional subjects taught in the schools, is now seen by those who care about it most intensely as a coherent whole. Summed up most succinctly, NGS is a curriculum. It would be possible for those responsible for education in some jurisdictions to use NGS

12、 as both foundation and frame for what the pupils in their schools would learn from kindergarten to Grade 12. Not what they would learn in totality, of course, but what they would learn about:The world in spatial terms;the nature of places and regions; the physical systems that make places what they

13、 are;the human systems that contribute to that same end; the interrelations of the physical environment and the societies, in both of which we all live;and, the uses of geography. From the point of view of those who want to implement the curriculum advocated in NGS, the key section is The five sets

14、of geographic skills identified by grade level (pp. 46-56). The section is subdivided into three groups, each containing the skills to be learned by a benchmark year (defined as the end of Grades 4, 8, and 12). At each of these stages, the skills the pupils will be expected to master are divided int

15、o five sets: * asking geographic questions * acquiring geographic information * organizing geographic information * analyzing geographic information * answering geographic questions There being nothing like an example to illustrate a generalization; here are the specific directions on what is meant

16、by a geographic question at the first level: Where do my classmates live? How is land used in the area around my school and my home? How far do my classmates travel to school? How long does it take? What mode of transportation do they use? What routes do they follow? And here is what the students at

17、 the end of Grade 12 will be taught to do, as laid out under the broad heading Skill Set 3: Organizing Geographic Information, and more specifically under the second rubric beneath that heading, which reads: Students should be able to Select and design appropriate forms of graphs, diagrams, tables,

18、and charts to organize geographic information, as exemplified by being able to: * Use scatter graphs-plots of the value of one item against another item-to display the association between two items (e.g., the relationships between land values and distance from the central business district downtown;

19、 or the relation between temperature and rainfall). * Prepare diagrams that illustrate geographic information (e.g., physical features from topographic maps; landscape sketches from fieldwork; cross-sections from topographic maps; or posters with graphic codes such as ears of corn to represent numbe

20、r of calories consumed. * Use line graphs to show changing patterns through time (e.g., rural population in the United States from 1890 to 1990; energy consumption in different regions of the world at 10-year intervals from 1950 to the present; telephone connections in the United States, 1890 to 199

21、0). Having spelled out the bare bones of what the school geographical curriculum should consist of, Chapter Four then deals with a topic that, at first glance, seems as though it already should have been covered: The subject matter of geography. In fact the chapter proves to be the first of a two-st

22、age fleshing out of the skeleton just discussed. The chapter is divided into 16 geography standards (my personal preference would have been for geography themes). No. 2 is: How to use mental maps to organize information about people, places, and environments in a spatial context. A page of text supp

23、orted by four clearly drawn diagrams make clear both what is meant by a mental map and provide an example of the way students can be helped to learn the skill of making them for themselves. The second stage of this elaboration of the curriculums content occupies Chapters Five to Seven. Each of these

24、 three chapters is devoted to a step-by-step presentation of the types of information that is appropriate for students to be learning in each of the 16 geography standards in each of the three stages that ends with a benchmark year. For example, in Grades 5-8, the heading Geography Standard 9, Human

25、 Systems The characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on earths surface the specific skills the students are expected to master include, as C. Explain migration streams over time, as exemplified by being able to: * Identify the causes and effects of migration streams (e.g.,

26、the movement of the Mongols across Asia and into Europe in the 13th century, Chinese workers to western North America in the second half of the 19th century). * Identify and explain how physical and other barriers can impede the flow of people and cite examples of ways in which people have overcome

27、such barriers (e.g., the Berlin Wall, the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains, the closed border between North and South Korea). Chapter Nine then provides a descriptive survey, couched in general terms, of what can be expected of students at each of the benchmark stages, with specific attention being g

28、iven to the ways in which students may fail to master the skills appropriate to the stage, or, on the other hand, exceed them (as well as describing those at standard). The body of the text ends with Chapter Ten: Thinking geographically. This chapter is ostensibly intended for parents, and provides

29、them with three series of questions (one series for each benchmark) that they may put to their children with the expectation that the children will know the answers. I think it more likely that the people who will be interested in these questions are members of school boards, and perhaps politicians

30、, i.e., those who have to answer to the public when questions are being asked about what is being taught in our schools. NGS ends with a series of appendices. One of these is a glossary of all the technical terms that well-educated graduates of the curriculum will have added to their vocabulary as a

31、 result of having progressed steadily through it. I hope that I have made it clear that, as a professional geographer and a member of the academic staff of a university department of geography, I am extremely impressed by NGS. It offers a far more coherent and useful grounding in my subject than I r

32、eceived when I was making my way through a strongly academic curriculum oriented to university entrance in the United Kingdom in the 1940s and 50s. By useful I do not mean that it would prepare a student to go to university in Canada in the 1990s. I mean that it would, to quote from the 1990 Alberta

33、 Elementary Curriculum, make a major contribution to a students ability:.to develop the knowledge, the skills and the positive attitudes of individuals, so that they will be self-confident, capable, and committed to setting goals, making informed choices, and acting in ways that will improve their o

34、wn lives and the life of their community. To which I would add that it also would help them to see how to live so that they will be able to contribute positively to keeping this planet a fit place to live. Though the NGS curriculum can be labelled academic in that students are challenged to master c

35、oncepts that, described in abstract terms, sound academic yet, because NGS provides examples of how students can absorb them while carrying out exercises that seem appropriate for the ages for which they are prescribed, it gives me the hope that the overwhelming majority, not just those oriented to

36、university entrance, in fact could master them. While my hopes are high, there is a major challenge that must be faced if the possibilities offered by NGS are to be used most effectively. It concerns the relationship of school to university. I do not have the slightest doubt that, if the NGS curricu

37、lum was introduced in Canada, that graduates from it would have achieved levels of competence in geography that would equal, or excel, those achieved by students currently taking first-year courses at the university level. Providing that university departments of geography were prepared for such a d

38、evelopment, it would bring great benefits to all. The sense of achievement among students would be enhanced. The satisfaction of having students who enjoy the challenges offered them in the classroom would be welcome among those who teach in the schools. And those of us who teach in universities wou

39、ld be delighted to have students entering our programmes who were fully equipped with the basic skills that would provide them with the foundation that they could then develop during their time with us. To achieve such co-ordination may not be easy. Even in provinces where geography is well establis

40、hed in the school curriculum, there seems to be relatively little effort made to co-ordinate what happens in university departments of geography with the pedagogical element in the preparation of those who will teach in the schools. Perhaps now that the perspective of history is making it possible t

41、o see how the contribution made to schooling by progressive education can be integrated with a curriculum whose content cont. on p.143 is framed in terms of the traditional subjects (Kliebard, 1995), the tendency for each of the major players (provincial departments of education, faculties or school

42、s of education, and university departments) to operate with as little concern for the others can be left behind. The very success of those who put the NGS together suggests how bright the future could be. Added material O.F.G. Sitwell is a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science

43、 at the University of Alberta.FOOTNOTE 1. Copies of Geography for Life are available from the National Geographic Society, Post Office Box 1640, Washington, DC 20013-1640. 1-9 copies Can $16.00 each; 10 or more copies, Can $15.00 each; postage and handling included.REFERENCES Geography Education Standards Project. Geography for Life: National Geography Standards, 1994. Washington: National Geographic Research & Exploration, 1994. Kliebard, H.M. Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1995.