Sir, Your report from the ASTI Conference (April 12th) highlighted the omission of history from the Junior Certificate curriculum in the White Paper on Education. Geography was omitted also and, as your report stated, delegates overwhelmingly urged the Minister for Education to retain the traditional roles of both history and geography as core subjects.
Geography provides the breadth and balance sought in the curriculum and complies with all its objectives. It is multi disciplinary, having links with most other school subjects and bringing together the environmental and social sciences in a uniquely integrating role appropriate to the curricular core.
It seems incomprehensible that there should be a proposal to drop geography at a time when increasing importance is being attached to the nature of our environment, the interaction between people and their environment, resource management, landscape heritage, regional and national development, global knowledge, European and international affairs, the developing world, social and cultural differences between peoples, etc, etc.
Geography is enjoyed by students who see it as being one of the most relevant school subjects, in that it deals with the real world in which they live. It is one of the most popular subjects at Leaving Certificate level. Inclusion of geography in the curricular core was proposed in the Green Paper on Education and is recommended by the NCCA. It would be ironic if it were dropped in Ireland, while the status of geography is being strengthened elsewhere in response to modern needs, as in the UK, US and Sweden.
Geography was not even mentioned in the curricular framework section of the White Paper on Education. Perhaps this was an accidental omission from the core there, as the unbalanced nature, poor structure and vague wording of that section suggest that it was compiled in great haste. The omission could not have been made deliberately by anyone familiar with contemporary geography and modern educational needs.
Geography was an important subject as early as the time of the Celtic monastic schools. If the present Minister and Government were to preside over its demise, they would be inflicting unprecedented damage on our educational system and on the welfare of the future citizens of this country. Yours, etc., Ballawley Court, Dublin 16.