I was looking for something else when I came across this book which has been made available as a PDF and written by Kieran O Mahony.
Published by Educare Press.
It explores the development of school geography in the UK with a focus on fieldwork in places.
It mentions some of the very early 'geographers', the work of Comenius, Erasmus, Vives and others, through to the interest shown by the Royal Geographical Society for a while, and on through the Keltie report, and the work of Douglas Freshfield and Pestalozzi's thinking on 'look and see' fieldwork.
It's worth taking a look at as it mentions no end of former GA Presidents who have appeared in this blog over the last couple of years.
It talks about Captain Maconochie, the first Professor of Geography in the UK in 1833 before becoming the Governor of a penal colony in Australia. He was also one of the founders and first secretary of the Royal Geographical Society.
His Wikipedia entry includes quite a lot more information on this interesting character.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/maconochie-alexander-2417
As we move into the 20th Century we are inevitably introduced to characters such as Halford Mackinder, A J Herbertson, Patrick Geddes and Le Play and Reclus.
Herbertson and colleagues were busy in 1902 when they realised they would not only have to train new teachers, but also retrain existing ones - running courses through the summer vacation. C B Fawcett (after whom there is a fellowship still in existence) and Blanche Hosgood were active here.
By the time H J Fleure is mentioned, Herbertson had involved the Ordnance Survey and standards were improving. He was also behind the launch of 'The Geographical Teacher' journal in 1901, which became 'Geography'.
The book goes on to describe the impact of the two world wars. One of these was a Ministry of Education circular 140, published in 1947 which paved the way for more fieldwork. The GA started to offer courses very quickly after this allowed for more work to be done off the school premises without HMI approval, and the FSC opened their first centre at Flatford Mill. Geoffrey Hutchings is mentioned here (another former GA President) in helping with this movement which soon saw over 200 field centres operating across the country.
A later chapter covers Grenville Cole, an early GA President.
Source:
You can read the whole book here.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED331742.pdf
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