How does a Humanities education help us to make sense of these two images?
Related sites to Humsteach blog
Spatialworlds
Australian Curriculum Portal
Geogaction
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
Geography Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of Australia
Scoop.it
Welcome to the HASS and I am thrilled that you will be having the opportunity to think HASS over the coming months. I look forward to work with you during the semester.
The purpose of this blog is to supplement the work we do each week during the course. The posting will be brief and will be a mixture of thinkpieces for you to respond to and resources (websites, articles and books) that will augment our weekly topics. It would be great if you used the facility on the blog to be notified when a posting is published.
I obviously see that HASS is an incredibly important part of the curriculum and I thought you may be interested in this blog I recently posted - it makes an argument for the importance of the humanities in the curriculum.
THE THREAT OF FOCUSSING ON UTILITARIAN EDUCATION
With today’s global competition, there is increasing concern about the nature and quality of education– should it be primarily practical and utilitarian and equipping students to be competitive in the workforce or should it rather be a liberal education with broad ideas and values to prepare a well-rounded student with the capacity to be fully functional democratic citizens, prepared for life in contemporary society? For students to be successful in today’s global economy, it should be seen that utilitarian and liberal education need to be tightly coupled, and that students’ academic, developmental, interpersonal and experiential lives are entwined. Schools should move towards developing transformational learning for students and not just focus on providing knowledge and understandings based on employability. Such questioning of the utilitarian trend in education around the world is critical when we consider the decrease in curriculum time for humanities in schools and the significant drop off in the number of students studying geography in particular in the senior school in Australia and around the world.
“Transformational learning means that the “whole student” has to develop so as to prepare him or her as a thinker and citizen for a challenging world; to question and affirm or change what she or he believes; and come to a greater understanding of the complex questions of his or her own life and the lives of others than they otherwise would. By attending to both leads to transformational learning and the development of the whole person into a flourishing individual and citizen.”
Traditionally in our school system the humanities’ (history, geography, studies of society etc) have developed those capacities referred to as liberal education. Ironically, it was the liberal subjects that dominated early education! In the present economic and educational environment the humanities in the senior school are being devalued and squeezed out of the curriculum in face of utilitarian demands. In Australia the humanities is declining in schools in terms of numbers, prestige and general influence. Many young people now leave school with a scant knowledge of history, geography and our society in general (law, government etc). The impact is particularly serious in the senior secondary year that provides a sophisticated understanding of the humanities for young people. The utilitarian demands on a young person when choosing subjects has resulted in significant reduction of the perceived ‘non employment direct’ subjects such as history, geography etc (in fact these subjects do have significant and much needed career pathways but often not seen as direct and thus not promoted as getting a student a job). As this blog has highlighted and discussed over the past 4 years, the opportunities in the spatial industry is enormous and subjects such as geography and history have an important role to play in developing student knowledge, skills and capacities in-line with the needs of that industry.
Australians hold what appear to be conflicting aspirational and practical notions of the purposes and value of a schooling. Economists and corporate leaders refer to this function of education as the development of human capital.
“…education is more than preparing for a job; it should be for acquiring the knowledge, skills, competencies, values, dispositions and capacities for many life roles in a world of inevitable change and that this is ultimately the more “practical” preparation for life.”
Anecdotally the trend away from the liberal humanities in school education, towards the demands of a utilitarian education, in particular in senior secondary, is common throughout the western world and similar OECD countries to Australia. There is a need to get quantitative and substantiated data on the trend away from the humanities and to research what other countries are doing to arrest the trend away from the humanities as highly respected (in number and prestige) subjects in schools. Those involved in humanities education consider that the trend away from the humanities towards utilitarian education in our schools (and universities) is undermining and threatening the development of a ‘well-rounded, thinking, socially analytical young citizen ready for the demands of the 21st Century globalised world.
Here are two really interesting articles from the UK re: importance of geography and diminishing numbers. Seems that the drift to utilitarian education is happening everywhere.
1. "Without geography, the world would be a mystery to us"
Geography is the subject that contributes more than any other to young people’s knowledge of the world, writes David Lambert.
2. "History and geography 'diminishing' in schools", says head
Subjects such as English, history and geography are being marginalised as schools ditch academic rigour in favour of “accessibility”, according to a leading headmistress.
The irony is that humanities subjects do have a vocational 'purpose'. The humanities subjects develop the highly sought after employability skills of literacy, teamwork, decision making, problem solving, interpersonal skills etc. For example, geography is a great humanities subject for young people to do as citizens now and in the future and is a subject with increasing vocational opportunities in the branches of geography (climatology, economic analysis, planning, environmental management, disaster mitigation etc etc) and the related areas of the spatial industry. Geography is also a subject which goes somewhere in the world of employment. There is a lot of work to be done with subject counselors, vocational consultants, parents and the community to get the message across that geography and all the knowledge, skills and capacities it develops in young people is and should be promoted as a learning area with great (and increasing)
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