The invention of geography

This article is dedicated to all the tireless and devoted geography educators in schools and colleges
working to help students to better understand their world.

Meet Rizwan. In many ways, he is a typical teenager. He is 14 and lives in an inner city suburb with his
parents, two brothers and a sister. He attends a large local school, recently made into an academy,
which has a rather poor local reputation. He enjoys hanging around with his mates, listening to his iPod,
playing cricket and video gaming. The world that he is growing up in is identical to our own, with a
notable omission. In Rizwan’s world, the subject of geography was never invented.

It is morning, and Rizwan has awoken sluggishly to another sunny spring day. Checking his mobile
phone, he sees he has time to take breakfast and watch some morning television. The news is on. There
are scenes of ruined buildings, overturned cars and people wailing and praying in some distress.
Unfortunately, it all makes little sense because nobody, not even the news reader, knows where the
place in the footage is or can understand what has caused the scene to occur. Things are little better
with the weather. The forecaster appears in front of a list of place names and summarizes eye witness
accounts of the current weather, as both maps and the study of climatology are unknown. Feeling
bored, Rizwan switches off the TV, packs his bag and sets off to school.

The route to school is dreary. Rizwan knows the main road like the back of his hand, but as he has never
had the opportunity to study his local area, most of the suburbs off of the beaten track are unknown to
him and place names are a complete mystery. The city is badly planned and congestion is rife. Cars
generally tended to drift around aimlessly until they happened upon their destination. In this world,
there are a few eccentric individuals calling for something akin to ‘sustainability’ but as few people have
any idea of the world beyond their back yard, and words such as ‘environment’ and ‘climate’ are not in
their vocabulary, these individuals go wholly unheard. Rizwan arrives at the school five minutes late and
scurries in through the doors to his form class, ready for another long day.

Rizwan excels at subjects such as IT and Design Technology, and is also quite good at science, but in
general he always had the nagging feeling that something is missing. He can write well, and just about
complete a long multiplication. He knows a thing or two about the past, including the fact that his own
family migrated from a distant land three generations ago. But he couldn’t name that distant land, and
couldn’t tell you what caused his family to migrate, nor could he have even the slightest hope of
explaining what he felt his ‘identity’ was. Something was definitely amiss. What exactly was the use of
knowing of how to read, write and add up if something so huge was so conspicuously absent? Rizwan
felt literally lost, not knowing where he was from and how he was related to the world around him.

This was certainly not a new feeling. Rizwan’s favourite books at primary school had been Barnaby Bear
Stays at Home and its sequel, Barnaby Stays at Home Again. These books, though fun, seemed
somehow limited. They lacked broadness. This feeling had only intensified as Rizwan got older and he
became interested in fashion and music. Most of all, there was a marked lack of connection between
things. Everything was studied in isolation. The label on his jeans said ‘Made in Bangladesh’, but where
was Bangladesh and why was he wearing its jeans? The rap music on his iPod was from the United
States. Now this was one country that Rizwan did feel he had sussed. Yes, he had watched many films
and it seemed quite clear that everyone there was rich, beautiful and famous.

This particular day in Rizwan’s life appears to be a fairly normal day. He is now sat in his history class.
History is one of his least favourite subjects, as above all others this one didn’t seem to make any sense
whatsoever. The class is all about the voyages of a man called James Cook who explored the Earth by
setting off in a completely random direction until he happened to hit land, a technique now regularly
employed by ferry companies. Almost falling asleep at his desk, Rizwan begins to doodle in the margin of
his exercise book as he usually does. At first the doodles appear to be inconsequential squiggles, but
then, as the teacher talks away, they seem to take on a deliberate and intelligent form. As the teacher
passes by his desk she eyes the scribbling and frowns.

“And what is this, Rizwan?” the teacher asks.

“I… err… I think it’s… England?” ventures Rizwan.

“Don’t be ridiculous. England doesn’t have a shape. And what’s this?”

“That? I think that’s… Well it’s… erm… Australia I think.”

“Australia!” the teacher laughed, “Every so often someone happens to land in this place called Australia,
though few are ever lucky enough to find their way back. What could you know about Australia?”

“I have been thinking lots about Australia. I saw it on TV.” Rizwan passes the teacher some handwritten
notes on some crumpled paper.

“Australia. A very flat country. Very dry. Deserted, almost” the teacher read aloud, mouth agape. “And
what do you call this Rizwan?”

“Erm, I thought I might call it a desert” answered Rizwan, meekly.

“No. I… I mean…” stuttered the astounded teacher, pointing vaguely to the scrawled notes, “I mean
what is this. What do you call all of this?”

“Oh. I have been calling it ‘Earth Writing’…”

“Earth… Writing… I can’t believe it. This is completely new Rizwan. This is truly amazing. This could
change the world. I… I… I have to sit down” gasped the exasperated teacher.

And so this was the day, the otherwise unspectacular spring day, that Rizwan, an average teenager,
invented geography. As with any fantasy story, I have asked you to suspend your disbelief throughout
the telling of this tale. Yet there is little doubt that there is something particularly implausible about all
of this. It seems absolutely inconceivable that humans could have got to where they are today without
having invented geography. It is surely one of our biggest ideas. Furthermore, it would appear to be an
indispensable component of our learning. The impulse to know where one is, where other places are,
and how we are connected is so strong that answers to these puzzles would be sought even if geography
was not taught at schools. Anybody living in a world without geography, and possessing even an ounce
of curiosity, would surely have cause to invent it.

It may not in fact be unreasonable to insist that all our geographies are inventions. After all, if the
discipline were not to exist, rivers would still flow, tectonic plates would still shift, people would still
migrate, places would still be made and borders still drawn. Geography is precisely our way of making
sense of such phenomena and fitting them into some kind of overarching framework or big picture.
Without such a sense, it seems to me that much of the world would be shrouded in impenetrable
mystery. We might well be able to read, write and add up but all of that would be as good as useless if
we were so disorientated as to have no understanding of the places and processes that make up our
world. In sum, we would be all skilled up with nowhere to go.

I myself dropped geography at the age of 14 and did not return to it until many years later.
Nevertheless, I have since come to realise that geography is a fundamental and crucial idea to us as
humans who together inhabit a shared world. This is why it is so disconcerting to hear stories of falling
geography entries, particularly in areas with high levels of student deprivationi. Every young person is
entitled to have access to this core world knowledge. I very much hope that a time never comes when
this fantasy story becomes a reality and a generation of young people is left, like Rizwan, lost and
isolated without it.

Let us continue to teach, learn and live geography, one of humanity’s greatest inventions.

Note

i
This is according to research from the University of Birmingham. For more details see Weeden, P. and Lambert, D.
(2010) ‘Unequal access: why some young people don’t do geography’, Teaching Geography, 35, 2, pp.74-75.