THE MAKING OF A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHY CURRICULUM

The Geography National Curriculum is now enshrined in law, and in schools the emphasis is, appropriately, on implementing its requirements in a stimulating and effective way. However, the Order, with its content-dominated framework for geography, represents a clear move away from the view of geography as a 'medium for education' established during the past twenty years of curriculum development. The reasons for this change in direction can be traced through the sequence of events in the making of the National Curriculum. In particular, an examination of the work of the Geography Working Group reveals that essential lessons from the curriculum development experience of previous decades were ignored by the Group. In the author's view the failure to apply curriculum principles was as much to do with the fact that certain issues had not been resolved in the geographical education world as a whole, prior to 1989, as it was to do with constraints of the Working Group situation. It is essential for the future well-being of the subject in schools that the nature of geography as a school subject is debated, and adherence to certain principles agreed so that we can face the future with confidence.