At school, we get brought in boxes of cheap books to buy from The Book People. Often, they are complete rubbish. There are box sets of Roald Dahl stories (I hate his books. I know I'm in the minority here, but even as a child, I couldn't stand them. Apart from his second volume of autobiography - that's okay.) There are books of the I-was-abused-as-a-child-and-need-to-tell-the-world genre. Mostly, there are cookery books (yeah, right...). But a month or so ago, there was an atlas. A huge one. Not just a coffee-table book, but the coffee table itself. Its original price was £70, and they were asking a tenner. As Ms Fab would say, it would have been rude not to.
I love Geography. I blame the wacky teacher I had at high school, who had an obvious passion for her subject, and infected me with it. We used to go traipsing miles through Maidstone, where I lived as a child, to go on stream studies. In the pouring rain, we'd take samples of sediment and study curves in the banks. In those days, there were no risk assessments or parental consent forms. If you fell in the water, well, you were stupid, and your friends fished you out again. When I went home sopping wet and muddy, my mother would sigh and say, 'I guess you had Geography today?' Trips were rarely planned. The teacher would just look out of the window, rub her hands together and say,' Let's go for a bit of a walk.' The result would be a missed lunch time and outraged teachers, who were missing half the children in their maths class.
My favourite bit at school was having to draw a cross-section of a landscape by looking at contours on a map. Our teacher used to choose the twistiest river on the map, and make us work out how long it was. And Geography brought in U-shaped valleys and glaciers and erosion and how the highest mountains in the world have marine fossils at the top. Brilliant.
When I was younger, I was going to join the RAF. I passed all the entrance exams (well, not the engineering one, which we all had to sit for some reason. I was told my results for that one were 'amusing'), but they didn't have vacancies in the trades I was after. I wanted to either be a photographic interpreter or a cartographer. What they had on offer were places in the Military Police, or as a dog-handler. I couldn't see myself in the police, and the officer interviewing me refused to let me be a dog-handler, as 'it would be a waste'. In the end, it was a waste anyway, as I went to work in a book shop instead...
Anyway, I was looking through my giant atlas last night, and found out that Tonga is also known as the Friendly Islands. How nice is that? It reminds me of the Terry Pratchett book, Nation, which has to be my favourite of his. It's all about islands and maps and the Geographical Society, and is absolutely wonderful.
Sadly, at school, no-one seems to like Geography. When it comes round to the Geography topic, teachers wince and say, 'I'm really sorry, but I need to ask you to do Geography this afternoon.' When I reply with enthusiasm, I'm given funny looks. My one regret with taking the year 2/3 class soon, is that I'll be missing doing rivers and mountains with the older children. Never mind, we have a village in India to learn about instead.
I love Geography. I blame the wacky teacher I had at high school, who had an obvious passion for her subject, and infected me with it. We used to go traipsing miles through Maidstone, where I lived as a child, to go on stream studies. In the pouring rain, we'd take samples of sediment and study curves in the banks. In those days, there were no risk assessments or parental consent forms. If you fell in the water, well, you were stupid, and your friends fished you out again. When I went home sopping wet and muddy, my mother would sigh and say, 'I guess you had Geography today?' Trips were rarely planned. The teacher would just look out of the window, rub her hands together and say,' Let's go for a bit of a walk.' The result would be a missed lunch time and outraged teachers, who were missing half the children in their maths class.
My favourite bit at school was having to draw a cross-section of a landscape by looking at contours on a map. Our teacher used to choose the twistiest river on the map, and make us work out how long it was. And Geography brought in U-shaped valleys and glaciers and erosion and how the highest mountains in the world have marine fossils at the top. Brilliant.
When I was younger, I was going to join the RAF. I passed all the entrance exams (well, not the engineering one, which we all had to sit for some reason. I was told my results for that one were 'amusing'), but they didn't have vacancies in the trades I was after. I wanted to either be a photographic interpreter or a cartographer. What they had on offer were places in the Military Police, or as a dog-handler. I couldn't see myself in the police, and the officer interviewing me refused to let me be a dog-handler, as 'it would be a waste'. In the end, it was a waste anyway, as I went to work in a book shop instead...
Anyway, I was looking through my giant atlas last night, and found out that Tonga is also known as the Friendly Islands. How nice is that? It reminds me of the Terry Pratchett book, Nation, which has to be my favourite of his. It's all about islands and maps and the Geographical Society, and is absolutely wonderful.
Sadly, at school, no-one seems to like Geography. When it comes round to the Geography topic, teachers wince and say, 'I'm really sorry, but I need to ask you to do Geography this afternoon.' When I reply with enthusiasm, I'm given funny looks. My one regret with taking the year 2/3 class soon, is that I'll be missing doing rivers and mountains with the older children. Never mind, we have a village in India to learn about instead.
But you can't look out of the window and say "Let's go to Chembakoli !" can you ?
ReplyDeleteTrue. And I really must learn how to spell the place!
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