Emotion, space and society, 2019-11, Vol.33, p.100630, Article 100630
2019
Details
- Autor(en) / Beteiligte
- Titel
- Kindness: A new kind of rigour for British Geographers
- Ist Teil von
- Emotion, space and society, 2019-11, Vol.33, p.100630, Article 100630
- Ort / Verlag
- Elsevier Ltd
- Erscheinungsjahr
- 2019
- Link zum Volltext
- Quelle
- Alma/SFX Local Collection
- Beschreibungen/Notizen
- Let's face it, those of us who work in the academic discipline of Geography, largely work on the subject of failure. The failure of political leaders worldwide to avert disastrous climate change. The need to prevent the continuation of the fastest species extinction the world has ever known. The social and personal repercussions of enormous global income, wealth and power inequalities. We describe all this, usually, as if it were just an interesting set of observations. Then we tell students to write an essay about it. If they cogently analyse our collective failure, we give them a high mark. Many of them can then take their university degrees and head out to banking, advertising and management and make the world an even worse place, armed with the knowledge of what they might be critiqued for by those who taught them, but never convinced them. Perhaps if we were kinder to our students when they were at university, were kinder and clearer in what we wrote and taught, more of them would use what they have learnt for good, rather than seeing their degrees as stepping-stones to their allotted place in the social hierarchy. •Geography emerged as a discipline at a time of emotional repression and the famous British ‘stiff upper lip’.•In the 1970s the last of the British Empire fell, the fate of Geography as an imperial discipline hung in the balance.•When a student’s work is actually weak – kindness is essential and being brusque means being brutal.•If Geography aimed to be “the kind discipline”, it would help to break the wider problem of academic arrogance.•Kindness is a vital aspect of academic work, and Geography in particular. It is something that all geographers rely upon.•Britain has a very peculiar problem with educational school divisions, reflected in who becomes a Geography lecturer.