Soooo Geography is the 'worst taught subject' and 'boring' surely not?!

[Lucycat]

well at least according to those who know nothing aka Ofsted

I have a vested interest here as I do teach the fabulous subject - but what do your children think?

well i was surprised that it was considered a soft a level

I didn't think it was considered soft - it definitely qualifies as an academic A-level.

However, last year I saw a survey which said that Geography was the subject most likely to deliver an A grade.

That meant that if you were looking for a fourth subject to study (ie not directly supporting your UCAS application), then Geography would be a pretty good choice.

At my secondary school all the teachers in the geography dept were, well, a little odd.

The lessons were boring as hell, sheep farming, hills and rivers were topics we discussed. Yawn.

Can you tell me why Geography doesn't teach children where places are any more? I would have thought that first basic geography is that and by the end of year 7 all 12 yo should be roughly able to fill in a map of the world. Has it been officially abandoned?

I did a term of that with my Y7s, candy, and they were virtually begging me to move on.

It's not like it was for those of us who are 40+. Back in the day, when there was one channel or the other to watch, our evening pastime was to go through the Readers' Digest Atlas and play Name the Capital. Totally different for the Playstation Generation. The best I can do with my own kids is to do a Facebook Traveller IQ.

I loved geography in school, particularly all the physical geography stuff.

I know a surprising amount about the cotton belt in America at one point!

My kids love it too.

DD at 10 has done all sorts of things about volcanos and earth quakes and subduction zones.

ds (7) is doing all about the weather, and delights in giving us a 5 day forecast. the hours fly by chez Bishop

Many moons ago, I chose not to opt for Geography when the teacher said we were all more stupid than his labrador puppy - never forgave the insult.
Now following GCSE course supporting SN pupils - it's great! Some pupils shocked how much harder it is compared with Geog in Yrs7,8 and 9....

I too am a secondary Geography teacher. I am finding that our subject is losing a lot of pupils because of the vocational courses on offer within the school. I am frequently asked 'How many GCSEs is Geography worth?' more often that 'What does GCSE Geography include?' iyswim. Unfortunately the likes of ICT, Health and social care, business studies etc that are worth x number of GCSEs take away a lot of our pupils!

As a department we do a good job (imo) of keeping lessons 'relevant' and entertaining, however there is very little we can do to attract those pupils who simply choose the subject worth more GCSEs

DS1 thinks its OK, they have had a couple of day trips to beach & mountains to reinforce the work, but we do live in an area with an interesting geog! In yr 7 they studied the local area then gradually widened it to study the whole country. Hes yr 9 now, not sure what hes doing THB. Personally, I enjoyed parts of the subject a lot (weather, geology) but hated having to learn the industries of the Ruhr valley. We had a v boring teacher who read out a script which we had to write down verbatim -EVERY LESSON. Enough to turn anyone off, I'm sure teachers don't do that these days.

geography was by far my favourite subject, which is why I did a degree in it. Got to go on some great field trips, including one to Majorca, which was basically sunbathing whilst pretending to study rocks and whatever.