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GUEST ESSAY: THINKING LIKE A GEOGRAPHER
Author(s) -
Gould Peter
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
canadian geographer / le géographe canadien
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.35
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1541-0064
pISSN - 0008-3658
DOI - 10.1111/j.1541-0064.1991.tb01297.x
Subject(s) - geographer , subject (documents) , feeling , psychology , sociology , social psychology , geography , computer science , cartography , library science
Compared to the geographic wasteland south of your border, geography appears to have fared well in Canada, both as a formal discipline extending our understanding by illuminating the human and physical worlds, and as a subject taught at all levels to create informed and aware citizens. I known you think much remains to be done, and perhaps things always look a bit greener on the other side of the hill, but I hope you will not mind my somewhat envious gaze. In fact, when I received the five volumes of the ‘curriculum guideline’ for geography, issued by the Ontario Ministry of Education for the intermediate and senior divisions of your high schools (ome 1988), my feelings were not so much envy as panic, a panic that rapidly induced something close to intellectual paralysis. Because in a moment I can only describe now as utterly weak and foolish, I started to read them, only to learn that your senior students ‘analyze, interpret … explain … design and develop networks, systems and simulations that involve six or more variables’ (ome 1988, A12). In retrospect, I still think my panic was justified. After 30 years of hard post‐doctoral work I have reached the point where I can think about the interactions of maybe three variables, but hardly the combinatorial possibilities of six. Such ineptness would mean that I might just squeeze into your tenth grade and from there slowly work my way over the next two years towards those Olympian heights of analytical thought where dwell Ontario's high school graduates.