When three environmentalists discuss the pros and cons of flying, as they did in a recent podcast episode, and at the end of it, they all agree to continue undertaking this high-carbon activity, what are geography teachers supposed to do?
Raise their eyebrows at the hypocrisy? Shake their heads in despair? Agree and move on? Or listen and consider their position on the issue as educators and global citizens?
Benefits of flying
I recognise the huge benefits of flying – it has helped me to explore the world, meet new people, become more open-minded, and to become a geographer. And I would like those benefits – as well as the ‘awe and wonder’ component of many foreign field trips – to be experienced by young people. I also recognise the vast social and economic benefits of travel to many destination communities around the world.
But I have difficultly coming to terms with the very real impact of not just my own carbon footprint, but that of the dozens of children who I encourage to fly on school trips to locations such as Iceland. Facilitating 26 student return plane journeys to Iceland, as I did last month, weighs heavily on my mind. Many of you reading this post will no doubt have also experienced this dilemma.
Premises
Let’s take a step back and look at this issue as part of the bigger picture of flying. My premises for this post are as follows:
Geography teachers are very well-informed people about environmental issues
Being well-informed of such issues, we recognise the existence of, and impacts of, anthropogenic climate change – and that such impacts are overwhelmingly negative for almost all people in almost all parts of the world
We also recognise that climate change is a collective action problem – that is, a situation in which all individuals would be better off from co-operating, but in which there are few incentives for individuals to take individual action
We recognise that as affluent members of an affluent country, we are likely to have a large carbon footprint
We recognise that transport, particularly air transport, is likely to be one of the biggest contributors to our carbon footprint
We recognise that, as teachers, we are role models to our students (and often to those in the wider community), so our decisions about how we act and what we say are likely to have a significant impact on the opinions and behaviours of others
Field trips are an essential part of what we do as geography teachers. We are very likely to organise them, lead them, take part in them, or facilitate them
Whilst essential in their educational role, field trips have an impact on the environment – and generally, those involving trips abroad are more likely to involve flying
So what do we do when we consider opening our students’ eyes to the world by organising field trips which involve flying? Cut out the flights altogether? Always go local?
Let’s return to the podcast for a moment.
Outrage and Optimism
It’s called Outrage and Optimism, and it’s highly recommended listening for geography teachers who want to keep up to date with developments in climate change policy. The three presenters have all been working in international environmental policy making and advocacy for decades: Christiana Figueres is the Costa Rican diplomat who led the negotiations which resulted in the 2015 Paris Agreement, and Paul Dickinson and Tom Rivett-Carnac continue to play active roles in this sphere.
They all fly frequently as part of their work, and they have all taken steps to try to minimise their flying: for several years, Paul only flew for work and not for family holidays, and they all make trips count by combining meetings and rejecting others in favour of remote working. But they all recognise the importance of face-to-face meetings, as well as keeping in touch with family members, and they were all wary of moralising and preaching (as am I!).
They also recognise the range of opinions in the climate change community: in a survey they issued prior to the programme, 21% of the respondents said it was okay to fly, 21% said it wasn’t, and 58% said it was okay to fly in some circumstances. They are under no illusion as to the role of flying in climate change, and the fact that its contribution to emissions is likely to rise owing to growing global prosperity and the decarbonisation of other sectors. They flag up efforts to decarbonise the aviation sector: in keeping with the ‘Optimism’ part of the podcast’s title, they are open to the idea of technological solutions in the mid- to long-term. But they are honest about the limited impact these will have in the next decade or so.
The Figueres Defence
The most powerful contribution to the discussion was by Christiana. She issued a forceful defence of carbon offsetting:
“I have been abundantly public for many years that I am an offset proponent. I think it is important, because I come from a developing country, and I have seen the benefit in developing countries of receiving funding for projects that otherwise would not be funded”
She pointed out that the offset market uses rigorous methodologies. Nevertheless, she recognised that providers of offset schemes are unregulated and there is much uncertainty in the sector. To compensate for this, she implored listeners: “if you’re going to offset, offset abundantly and generously” and “make sure that you have covered and over-covered your emissions, and that you are investing in high quality projects in developing countries who need that investment.”
How might Christiana’s contribution speak to the geography teacher’s dilemma?
Six suggestions for Geography teachers
Returning to the premises at the start of this post, we should be mindful of the carbon footprint of field trips and we should also consider how we might run them in a way which facilitates the discussion of these issues by students and teachers alike. So here are six suggestions for how geography teachers might approach the dilemma of flying and field trips:
Use flights on a field trip when other alternatives are not reasonably available
Fly when the experience warrants it
Organise field trips that involve flying less often than you might be tempted to – perhaps once every two or three years? We now interleave our foreign field trips, which used to take place annually, with one to the excellent Field Studies Centre in Millport, on the Isle of Cumbrae in western Scotland.
Carbon offset your flights, and consider ‘over-offsetting’ – see Christiana’s comments above
Ask tour providers what they are doing about the impact of their flights. When I called three school tour operators a few years ago about this issue, only one had formulated a policy about it: Discover the World Education. So I stopped using our previous tour company and began working with DtWE. More tour companies are developing their sustainability policies, but it is still worth asking questions of them
Involve students, parents, and indeed your senior leadership team, in your deliberations, and take the issues out in the open. For the first time this year, we included a slide on sustainability in the parent’s information presentation, and this began not with reusable cups and paper straws, but with the ‘elephant in the room’ – the flights – and why we were contributing to Discover the World’s ‘Greener Growth’ offset scheme. We are proud that we have paid £20 per student into this scheme: a total of £520
You may well be further down the road in terms of sustainability of your geography field trips than me, or you may have just begun the journey.
You may have already dismissed the idea of offsetting, or you may have embraced it.
You may feel that the geography curriculum – and the acts of its teachers – should be clearly separated from issues of how we ‘act sustainability’.
But whatever your stance, I believe that if you return to the premises I set out at the start of this post, you will agree that the issue of flying is certainly worth paying attention to, and perhaps worth acting upon. I welcome your thoughts.
After several years in gestation, and with the assistance of Elaine Anderson and Richard Bustin, I have distilled my ideas of how teachers may offer students ‘grounds for hope’ for their future and that of the world into an article for the Spring 2024 issue of Teaching Geography journal.
I have been inspired by many people, among them the psychologist Maria Ojala, who argues that fostering ‘constructive hope’ can enhance students’ engagement with issues of sustainable development, and David Hicks, who has written much on the topic of hopeful geography over the past couple of decades.
I take Hicks’ work further by drawing more heavily on global scale examples of ‘social progress’ to improve students’ aware of ‘big picture’ changes. I foreground Max Roser’s ‘three truths’ argument: the world is awful, the world is much better, and the world can be much better (see below):
The article also features resources which can help teachers to keep their understanding of global social trends up to date, including Gapminder, Our World in Data, and Pixels of Progress and in doing so it recognises the legacy of inspirational public health professor Hans Rosling.
A number of teaching resources which could be used by teachers wanting to engage with hopeful geography are featured in the article and as downloads; I have trialled all of them in schools (one example of a student’s future timeline is given as an illustration).
I give the threefold concept of hopeful geography, which can be taken further as the foundations of a hopeful education. I have written about this elsewhere in this blog, although my ideas evolve over time. I advocate for a curriculum which enables our students to do three things:
Evaluate progress
Believe in humanity
Create a sustainable future
Any approach to education should be open to criticism, and hopeful geography is no exception. I acknowledge several concerns, most notably the accusation that it could lead to complacency, and I try to address each one.
As the article went to press, Hannah Ritchie’s book ‘Not the End of the World’ was published, and whilst it too is not exempt from critique, the guiding message of that book chimes with mine: it is helpful to open the possibility to our students that they might be “the first generation to build a sustainable planet” – and as geographers, there is no better opportunity than now to inform and inspire this generation.
My article in the February 2024 edition of Geography Review outlines culture-led regeneration, assesses its impacts, and evaluates the need for regeneration in Bradford. It also outlines plans for Bradford’s year as the UK City of Culture in 2025. I’m proud that the editorial team made it the cover story (see above).
In this article, I differentiate between regeneration structures (the long term conditions necessary for areas to thrive, such as physical and social infrastructure, and policies such as taxation and immigration) and regeneration strategies (which tend to focus on one area for a time-limited period). The UK City of Culture scheme falls into the latter strategy. Culture-led regeneration is an increasingly popular strategy: it refers to attempts to use arts, music, literature, and often sport too, to attract people and investment to an area.
The success of Liverpool’s year as the European Capital of Culture in 2008 encouraged the UK government to launch its own City of Culture competition, the winners of which are shown below:
Year
City
2013
Derry-Londonderry
2017
Kingston-upon-Hull
2021
Coventry
2025
Bradford
Winners of the UK City of Culture Competition
The UK provides cities (or regions) with funding to prepare a bid, and winners receive several million pounds to make their plans into a reality (Bradford will receive at least £3 million).
Plans for Bradford include making the most of the revitalised City Square, Bradford Live arena, the Alhambra and St George’s Hall, and many more venues across the borough. Themes will include ‘City of the World’, ‘Coming of Age’, ‘STEAM powered’ and ‘Welcome Home Sexy!’ – the latter refers to grafitto which visitors to the city could see when they arrived at Bradford Interchange train station (see above).
Critiques of the culture-led regeneration include discussions of the ethics and efficacy of spending money on cultural offerings when social needs may be more acute, and concerns that the laudable aims of culture-led regeneration may have been taken advantage of by big business. Oli Mould’s critique is featured in the article.
What themes might reinvigorate the global dimension of geographical education?
How should geographical education engage with visions of the future?
These are the two concerns of this post, and they are intertwined.
The post mainly concerns geographical education, but the discipline is necessarily implicated. It is meant as a discussion generator rather than as an academic article, so please excuse any clangers and unattributed notions!
The Geography of It All
The immediate trigger for this post is ‘The Geography of It All’, a recent article by David Lambert (2021), which poses the central question of “[W]hat does geographical study bring to the table, especially in our deliberations with young people about contemporary predicaments and existential challenges[?]”.
It is an accessible and thought-provoking piece which is open about geography’s predicament, warts and all. So, for example, Lambert flags up geography’s physical-human divide, its involvement in ‘competing’ with history for students, and its complexity, which threatens to overwhelm the integrity of the discipline. But he is insistent in promoting the value of geography – not just for students, but for the future of planet earth. His concluding paragraph is worth quoting in full:
“An appropriate educational response to the human epoch needs to value geographical thinking: thinking that does not put human beings above (or even separate from) nature; that puts locales and nations into their global context; and which always seeks to understand interconnections. I believe reformed school geography, which seeks to enhance children and young people’s capabilities with regard to thinking about society and nature relationships and environmental futures, represents a profound educational response to the challenges of the human epoch.”
Lambert therefore sees global futures as integral to the future of geography. I concur, and I offer some considerations that might inform the global dimension of ‘a reformed school geography’.
The symbiosis of History and Geography
Lambert notes how philosophers of history are increasingly recognising the role of earth systems in the story of humankind. If the role of the ‘non-human’ is indeed becoming more salient in the discipline of history, then this raises the prospect that we might see this feed more explicitly into the school history curriculum in the years to come. We must hope that this will see an appreciation of the importance of human/non-human interactions and planetary limits rather than a re-emergence of environmental determinism.
Just as history is coming to terms with the environment, I argue that geography should be more comfortable with temporality. In a presentation to the recent GA Geography Teacher Educators Conference[1], I showed images of four two-page spreads from a current A Level textbook on the theme of human development. There were a handful of maps, a smattering of tables and photographs, but no graphs showing change over time – and little recognition of trends in the text either. This may be an extreme example, but could it be symptomatic of an underplaying of trends in some parts of the geography curriculum, particularly in global development? Might this go some way to explaining why many students are so surprised when they are confronted with evidence for long-term improvements in a wide range of indicators of social flourishing, as presented by resources from the Gapminder Institute, Our World in Data, and so on?
Lifting our eyes up
Alongside a consideration of how much attention geographers could spend on long-term trends, it is timely to consider to who we claim to be speaking on behalf of. Indeed, although Lambert’s article chimes with my thoughts on the subject’s global dimension, his comment that “we are browbeaten about the end of progress (when we can no longer assume our children will have ‘better’ lives than their parents)” deserves closer attention. His use of ‘we’ and ‘our children’ appears to be made from the view of someone in the global north – and yes, from that standpoint, there has arguably been a narrowing of horizons, a questioning of progress, and a growing sense of unease, driven by inequality and widespread economic stagnation.
However, taking into account a broad sweep of socio-economic measures from a range of well-respected IGOs, and notwithstanding stubborn levels of inequality within countries, living conditions for most people in the global south have seen continual improvements over at least the past seventy years (Roser, 2018; Rosling et al, 2018), meaning that, in most respects, many global citizens are living ‘better lives’ than their parents, and many will expect their offspring to live ‘better lives’ in their turn.
Figure 1: The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better (Roser, 2018)
Drawing students’ attention to these achievements (see, for example, Alcock, 2019a, 2019b; Standish, 2020), should not be seen as being dismissive of remaining problems, or as being ignorant of the huge challenges of the Anthropocene. As Max Roser – the founder of Our World in Data – has written, “The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better. All three statements are true” (Roser, 2018; see Figure 1). There is indeed a great opportunity for a rich and far-reaching debate to be had, not only amongst geography educators, but also between students, on the theme of ‘progress’. This would draw on commentators who have responded critically to proponents of an ‘optimistic’ or, as Rosling would have it, a ‘possibilistic’ worldview (see, for example, Hickel, 2017; Paulsen, 2019a, 2019b; Aguilera, 2020).
A reformed school geography, I argue, should enable students to develop a more accurate and balanced evaluation of humanity’s achievements and failures over a prolonged period, and at a global scale. Such a worldview would not be uncritical of economic and social failings or of environmental crises. Instead, it would contextualise them. It would not underplay young people’s anxieties about the future. But it would embolden them to develop a sense of hope, as they would be able to draw confidence from previous successes – such as victories in human rights, reductions in child mortality, and increases in renewable energy supplies – with which to face the future. This balanced evaluation would also assist them – and us, as teachers – to pursue our shared geographical journey to explore the challenges of the Anthropocene.
My other reflections on Lambert’s post come under three broad themes.
Three global themes
With the above comments in mind, and in response to Lambert’s provocation, what might the global element of a ‘reformed school geography’ look like? I offer three very broad approaches. These are rough and ready, incomplete, overlapping, and they piggyback on the ideas of many others. Indeed, many elements are already taking place in classrooms – and remote learning environments – across the country! My main aim is to stimulate a reaction, to help geography stay relevant, engaging and attractive, but moreover, so that it is able to be more responsive to the challenges facing the human and non-human world.
Big Picture Geographies
Big Picture Geography would entail an increased awareness of significant historical trends in ‘human’ geography (using data visualisations such as those on Our World in Data), accompanied by a focus on graphicacy skills.
It would also harness the power of ‘big picture’ narratives. In a comment below Lambert’s piece, the historian Andreas Koerber identifies a new wave of large-scale popular historiography which he calls ‘Big History’ but whose contents are often deeply geographical (for example, Frankopan, 2015 and Diamond, 2011). This appetite for popular narratives which explore long-term changes over space exposes a vein of curiosity which geographers should leap at the opportunity to tap into. Geography teachers and students should take care not to be ‘prisoners of geography’ and look outside of our traditional literary domains.
Big Picture Geography should be informed by a decolonised approach to the subject: it should involve a wider range of perspectives, it should heed more voices, and it should acknowledge and problematise the long history of shifting power relationships.
Co-operative Geographies
For too long, Garrett Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ (1968) has been the go-to resource use theory for many geography teachers, myself included. However, although it assumes innocent actors combining to cause large-scale problems, in its application, it heightens misanthropic prejudices and a pessimistic view of human co-operation. It is time for a tilt towards co-operative geographies. These would give due recognition to evidence showing the fundamental decency and collective mindedness of most humans. Giving more saliency to Elinor Ostrom’s theories of small-scale co-operative management of common resources would not only be closer to what happens ‘on the ground’ in many cases, but it would restore some much-needed belief in humanity. Rutger Bregman’s Humankind (2020) is another weapon in the geographer’s armoury against cynicism: he draws on a wide range of historical evidence to argue that believing in human kindness and altruism can change how we think and act.
An examination of different scales of co-operation would be a great geographical project, and a way to build a conceptual bridge from the local to the global. It could draw parallels between small-scale community initiatives such as Friends groups and Green Flag projects, regional and national instances of altruistically pulling together (as shown by the high levels of adherence to social distancing rules in the Covid-19 pandemic), and international and global examples of co-operation, such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
As Elise Boulding pointed out in 1988, IGOs and NGOs may be interpreted as aspects of a co-operative global civic culture which fosters ideals of global interdependence, sustainable development and peace – but how often do we refer to them as such? And how have geography teachers framed largely successful co-operative endeavours such as the European Union? Generations of students grew up thinking of the EU as creators of milk lakes and butter mountains and pesky imposers of fishing quotas, rather than as engines for peace and creators of social democratic norms. (Did Boris Johnson bribe David Waugh?)
A more realistic, historical, and evidence-based awareness of how humans pull together, adapt, and respond to resource challenges would also enrich secondary school geography. A move away from the discredited theories of Thomas Malthus to a more nuanced examination of the ideas of a range of thinkers, including
Ester Boserup, Kate Raworth and Ruth DeFries (see, for example, DeFries, 2014) would reveal different takes on the contentious issue of population/resource management. This might then soothe pupils’ fears of a ‘population explosion’ (which, according to one KS3 Geography video on the otherwise commendable Oak Academy, is still happening!) and instead open up a new sense of optimism for engaging with the future.
Planetary Futures
Reinvigorating the ‘futures dimension’ is vital in reformed secondary school geography. The groundwork for this has been laid down by David Hicks and others since the 1990s. The theme of the 2007 GA Conference was Future Geographies, and there is a significant bank of resources and skilled practitioners that could be drawn upon from the past thirty years or so. Francis Hutchinson (1996) is also a source of inspiration for geographers who are keen to get a handle on how to teach a futures-orientated curriculum. An intriguing and agenda-setting article by Hoffman et al (2021), based on action research, found that “a futuring approach to education… contributes to an enhanced sense of agency among students in dealing with wicked problems”.
Sitting squarely alongside futures education, but also drawing from the ideas of ‘Big Picture’ and ‘Co-operative’ geographies, a reinvigorated and evidentially grounded ‘geography of hope’ should surely play a role in the education of future geographers: this would help students to evaluate progress, believe in humanity, and then, using these insights, help them to create a better world[2].
Climate change deserves a special place in the curriculum. As the ultimate global ‘wicked problem’ – and one which is not going away any time soon, it deserves a permanent, significant, and guaranteed place at the table, and it should be repeatedly visited in the classroom. The wording in the National Curriculum is not emphatic enough. Climate change is a touchstone environmental issue and one which the public view as being inherently geographical. It also allows for the development a panoply of hard and soft skills, as well as providing an opportunity to feed into ‘Big Picture’ and ‘Co-operative’ geographies. Two of the most pressing needs are firstly for students to be able to have the skills to navigate the debate about ‘who is to blame’ for climate change, and secondly to appreciate the relative impact that different strategies might have on overcoming this challenge (see, for example, Project Drawdown): what use is recycling and turning lights off, if steel and concrete production continue unhindered, and animal products remain a mainstay of so many diets?
Planetary futures would also provide a suitable home for Late-covid and Post-covid geographies. The resource bank developed by Alan Parkinson (2020) is a treasure trove for educators which could be used to help conceive of a post-covid world. Applying some of the insights to other infectious diseases would help to bring up discussions in health geography which until now may, for many of our students, have been muted owing largely to the fact that diseases have mostly occurred ‘in other places’.
Bringing young people in
Lambert is passionate about developing children and young people’s capabilities; I agree, and they deserve a central and active role in the future of school geography, both as agents in the reformulation of the curriculum, and as citizens of the world it – and they – will help to shape. If we are bold enough to reform the way we approach the global dimension of school geography, then we should involve young people in our journey. Exactly how this could be done is beyond the scope of this piece!
As the world moves on, so must geography. If we accept that the Anthropocene is indeed a ‘game-changer’ (as Lambert refers to it on a comment in the thread below his article), we need to continue with the pivot to the global and take the futures dimension seriously too.
I welcome feedback on these ideas.
David
References
Aguilera, R. (2020) The Glass Half-Empty – Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century. London: Repeater
alcockblog 
