Spring Conferences in the 1950s and 1960s

More images of finds in the GA Archive in Solly Street. I need to spend some more time exploring these documents to see who was involved in presenting the sessions and any other secondary details locked away in their contents... All I had time to do was capture their front cover showing the different venues and Presidents overseeing them e.g. the Spring Conference of 1962 was hosted by Stanley Henry Beaver at Keele University.

These are the front covers of some of the programmes from back in the day. Part of the albums on my Flickr account.

Also a Summer School brochure. Another initiative that no longer takes place. These were organised from the GA's HQ at the time: the Park Branch Library. In 1959, they took place in Spain and Switzerland.

Domesday Discs - 1986

The BBC's Domesday Disc project appeared in 1986.

It involved students collecting data, and adding to a digital laser disc the size of an old LP, which was read using a special reader, and navigated using a tracker ball which could be rotated by the hands. The final product was quite costly to purchase - a real investment for a school. I believe the price included the BBC Micro that was required to run the associated software and hardware.

Initially estimated to require the involvement of 10,000 schools and about one million children, the intention was to make the role of schools central in a data gathering project that would assign each school to a geographical area, have parents and local societies collect data, with the schools "acting as a focus and providing the computer". Questionnaires about geography, amenities and land use were to be completed, with school pupils and other contributors also able to write about their local area and "the issues affecting them" in their own words

Source: Wikipedia

As with the Land Utilisation Surveys of Stamp and Coleman, students were involved in its production and data collection, and it was a BBC project aimed at commemorating the 900th anniversary of the original 'Domesday' survey of 1086 ordered by William the First of England.

I still have one of the discs - although not the player and tracker ball to make use of it. There was an also an EcoDisc based on Slapton Ley which we also had in my geography department.

This website provides further details on the project.

There is an article from former GA President Margaret Roberts on the use of the Community Disc in an issue of 'Teaching Geography' from 1990. An early contribution to TG from Margaret.

I remember some external organisation coming in and filming me demonstrating the discs - I wonder what that was for, and whether it still exists somewhere - it would be wonderful to see it as I was fresh into my teaching career....

References:

Roberts, Margaret. “Locations, Lines and Areas: Exploring the Community Disc in the BBC Domesday System.” Teaching Geography, vol. 15, no. 1, 1990, pp. 17–18. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23752172. Accessed 23 Sept. 2023.

National Archives detail: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C16160

https://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html

Some of the resources that came from the project:

Research Paper (Open Access)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232993632_The_Domesday_Project--an_educational_review

The BBC later produced two further discs: an EcoDisc and one on Volcanoes.

I remember seeing them both - and also the very detailed instruction manuals.

A web based version existed for a while with an update for places in 2011. It's now on the National Archive site.

And a video of it in action:

Keen to hear from anyone who has memories of using the BBC Domesday Discs.

Aerial Intelligence in WWII

There have been several GA Presidents who have been revealed as working in aerial intelligence during the Second World War. This is explored in their entries.

For example, Michael Wise graduated in 1939, and served in the Army in Europe and the Middle East during the Second World War, reaching the rank of Major and was awarded the Military Cross.

Wise was awarded the Military Cross for his conduct in the fierce battle of the Argenta Gap in April 1945 (see Jackson and Gleave 1988). His company’s forward ground was overrun by a surprise enemy attack and its headquarters were under threat. The citation for his medal refers to his ‘calm and confident bearing … [as] an inspiration to all members of his company, and his manner of dealing with a most difficult and dangerous situation is beyond praise’. 

During the war of 1939–45, intelligence was gleaned from aerial photographs by a newly founded organization that developed into the Allied Central Interpretation Unit. This was based primarily at Danesfield House (known as Royal Air Force Medmenham) some 50 km west of London, in Buckinghamshire.

David Leslie Linton gets a mention here. I know that he was involved in suggesting launch sites for the 'V1 and V2' weapons.

Work at Medmenham, although important for the war effort, required interpreters familiar with aerial photographs rather than geology as such – but geology did assist the search for storage sites for ‘V’ weapons, terrain interpretation for the 1944 Allied landings in Normandy, and in guiding plans to bomb German industrial complexes hidden underground.

W G V Balchin wrote a useful summary which I have mentioned in a previous blogpost. He mentioned some of those involved and why geographers were useful.

Geography has always been vital to the prosecution of war, in three ways: first, intelligence is critical; secondly logistics (geographical factors influence the deployment of men, materials and firepower); thirdly, in action (geographical factors enter in decisions on the disposition of forces, where to attack or defend, what routes to follow, where to land invasion craft and so on.

References

Balchin, W. G. V. “United Kingdom Geographers in the Second World War: A Report.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 153, no. 2, 1987, pp. 159–80. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/634869. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.

https://www.proquest.com/openview/a4b517a601813d3c3c3fc825fb1fb8fb/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1818801 - Linton's work

World War One.

Charles Close was of course involved in World War I.

In Great Britain, a Topographical Section, later renamed Geographical Section, was assigned to the general staff in 1904 (Geographical Section, General Staff or GSGS). Until 1911, this section was headed by Charles Frederick Close (1865-1952), who reformed organisation and training based on his experiences of surveying in India; after that, he took over as Director General of the Ordnance Survey.

The OS remembers the staff it lost every Remembrance Sunday.

BAAS Publication

It was only when I started reading about the range of GA Presidents who were involved with the British Association (for the Advancement of Science) Section Committees that I remembered a dog-eared publication I bought some time ago from a second hand bookshop in Norwich.

I can't see any names involved in its production that are also closely linked to the GA on this occasion. It includes a nice map of Norfolk though.

Dudley Stamp's maps revisited

Thanks to Steve Brace for the link to a new research project making use of Dudley Stamp's Land Utilisation Survey UK project.

We scanned Dudley Stamp maps & compared them with modern satellite data to record the extent of land-use change across Britain in mid-20thC. Our map outlines land conversion for every 10km x 10km sq. @andysuggitt & @AGAuffret#geographyteachers #NEA https://t.co/UIEk3Sw9Lj

— Steve Brace (@SteveBraceGeog) November 5, 2023

The full piece in 'The Conversation' explores a new project. 

Our answer was to use the detailed maps that a huge army of volunteer citizen scientists (many were schoolchildren!) collected under the leadership of Sir Dudley Stamp in the 1930s/40s. His team visited every county of Britain, noting down the land-use of the time... 🗺️(3/17). pic.twitter.com/2PVljhHbA2

— Andy Suggitt (@andysuggitt) November 1, 2023

The outcomes are reported in this research paper. (Open Access at the time of posting).

We estimate that roughly 90% of lowland meadow and pasture has been lost. Land was converted either to arable farmland, which saw a 22% increase, or to agriculturally improved grassland, which now occupies 27% of Britain’s land area.

Urbanisation saw the nation’s built area expand from 4% to 5%. And woodland cover doubled from 6% to 12%, largely due to a concerted effort to increase the country’s reserve of timber. For better or worse, the nation’s land use became less mixed and more consolidated.

All of this environmental change is thought to have had a profound effect on biodiversity. According to the recent State of Nature Report, the abundance of UK species has declined by an average of 19% since 1970. Some 1,500 species (or 16% of those analysed) are now threatened with national extinction.

The full piece outlines further changes affecting particular species.

All the maps are available for free download.

Our answer was to use the detailed maps that a huge army of volunteer citizen scientists (many were schoolchildren!) collected under the leadership of Sir Dudley Stamp in the 1930s/40s. His team visited every county of Britain, noting down the land-use of the time... 🗺️(3/17). pic.twitter.com/2PVljhHbA2

— Andy Suggitt (@andysuggitt) November 1, 2023

M. R. G. Conzen

Another post on people who were never President, but served the Association in various ways.

Conzen was born in 1907 and died in 2000.

1935–2000: Member of the Geographical Association - 65 years a member!

 Michael Conzen was born in Berlin, the only child of parents with strong artistic bents. Conzen decided that geography was going to be his subject through map reading, hiking in the countryside, and reading, not through the inspiration of his teachers. He entered the University of Berlin's famed Geographical Institute in 1926, when it was at the zenith of its intellectual reputation. He was taught by, amongst others, Albrecht Penck, Otto Schlüter, Hans Bobek and Alfred Wegener, the latter of whom gave lectures on his revolutionary theories of 'continental drift.

In 1933, Conzen fled Germany for London where his fiancée, and future wife, Freda, was studying. There was little call for geography teachers in depression-hit Britain and so, thanks to the advice proffered by the then Geographical Association President, H.J. Fleure, Conzen enrolled as one of the first two students on a new course in town and country planning at the University of Manchester, subsequently working for four years as a planner in Cheshir

Fleure's involvement was through the International Student Service that was engaged in trying to help the many young refugees entering Britain in the 1930s and 40s.

Freda was employed in the GA office, typing, packing up parcels for the lending library and the like; whilst, 'Con' was employed to redraw many of the maps for publication, and became one of the regular reviewers of books for Geography through the later 1930s (signed G.C.). This was good practice for writing academic geography in English and culminated with one of the few reviews published in Britain of Richard Hartshorne's The Nature of Geography in volume 2.

In 1946, Conzen moved to Newcastle where he began lecturing for GA Branches all over the north of England through the 1950s and 1960s.

He is survived by his son Michael, Professor of Geography at the University of Chicago.

Happy to learn more about Mr. Conzen's involvement with the GA.

Source:

Slater, Terry. “M.R.G. Conzen, 1907-2000.” Geography, vol. 85, no. 4, 2000, pp. 355–355. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40573480. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/documents/college-les/gees/mrgconzencv.pdf

Conzen, M.R.G., 1958, “The Growth and Character of Whitby”, G.H.J., Daysh (Ed.), A Survey of Whitby and the Surrounding Area, Shakespeare Head Press, Eton, pp.49-89. 

http://spacesyntaxistanbul.itu.edu.tr/papers/invitedpapers/Jeremy_whitehand.pdf

Michael Cross' memories

I enjoyed this account of going to Oxford University in the 1950s... by Michael Cross.

There are mentions of quite a few former GA Presidents along the way.

A few extracts

There were also, I remember, the Admiralty Handbooks. These were written by geographers in both Oxford and Cambridge during the War years to inform the military of the history, geography and culture of countries in the sphere of war.

We were all well aware of the Davisian cycle of erosion and it seemed almost to be geomorphologically 'fashionable' to look for erosion surfaces - they seemed to play such a major part in the interpretation of landscapes. Wooldridge and Morgan's Geomorphology along with Wooldridge and Linton's Structure, Surface and Drainage in South East England were necessary 'reads'. We were also made aware of a new (to most of us) hypothesis challenging Davis's, one formulated by Penck - summarised by "wearing back as opposed to wearing down". Little were we to realise that over the decades to follow another half dozen or so hypotheses would be suggested by competing geomorphologists. (I have often thought that it would be true to say that wherever two geomorphologists are gathered together, they will disagree!)

Research on frontal systems had only properly got underway in the inter-War period. Air masses were new to us. The then latest edition of Austin Miller's Climatology had what appeared to be an added chapter, Air Masses, and we were advised to buy this edition and avoid older second-hand copies without it. I find it remarkable that today it is routine for TV weather forecasters to refer to air masses in their forecasts. Similarly, most had not heard of the jet stream. I believe some empirical knowledge of jet streams was gained by fighter pilots over Japan in WW2 but it only 'filtered through' to the general public with the growth of high-level airline flights in the 1960s and beyond. During my three years I cannot recall any mention being made, detailed or otherwise, of the jet stream.

Jean Brunhes 'classic' text La Geographie Humaine, although nearly forty years old, was recommended reading, as was The British Isles by Dudley (later Sir Dudley) Stamp - aka 'Deadly Dudley'! 

I wonder why he was Deadly Dudley... as in deadly dull?

In 1954, the annual meeting of the British Association was held in Oxford and thus the accompanying volume The Oxford Region was an up to date source. Edited by my tutor A F Martin and by R W Steel, other familiar names are listed on the Contents page (Dr Steel left midway through my time at Oxford and went on to become Professor of Geography at Liverpool.)

Reference:

https://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/alumni/news/181127-mcross-1950-geog.html

Alan Kinder to step down from his GA Chief Executive post

I have covered the story of the previous GA Chief Executives as part of the writing of this blog.  

It was announced today that Alan Kinder is going to be stepping down as Chief Executive of the Geographical Assocation. He is moving to a new job with the Regional Studies Association in 2024.

The Chair of the RSA Board is Professor Neil Lee, Geography Department, London School of Economics and readers of the blog will know that the GA and LSE were connected for many decades, with some former GA Presidents being drawn from LSE staff, and the GA Conference being held there for many years too.

Alan leaves the GA in a strong position having completed 11 years in post. He has been an excellent Chief Executive, taking over from Professor David Lambert.

I first knew Alan when he co-chaired the Secondary Phase Committee I served on from 2004, when he was an Advisory teacher in London. He also co-edited the KS3 Toolkit series in 2007ish which I contributed to. I have co-presented with him at GA Conferences. 

He has overseen some dramatic changes in the GA's structure, staffing and operations and taken it through the pandemic to emerge in a very strong position with record membership levels.

I wish him all the best for his next challenge. 

This also means that there is an exciting job opportunity for someone as well: as the GA's next Chief Executive.

Yesterday was also the deadline for nominations for GA President 2025-26 and it will be interesting to find out who has put themselves forward... 

Statements below from the GA website:

GA Chief Executive Alan Kinder said:

“As a former teacher of geography, it has been the most enormous honour and privilege to have served as the GA’s Chief Executive for more than eleven years. This is a vibrant community, supporting a vital part of every young person’s education. Teachers of geography deserve the assistance of an independent subject association, focused squarely on their needs and interests, and I hope I have been able to play a role in representing and supporting teachers effectively during my time in post. As I begin to prepare for the exciting professional challenges that lie ahead for me, I’m confident that the GA will use its current strategy as a strong foundation for further progress in the years ahead.”

GA Chair of Trustees Professor Alastair Owens said:

“Alan Kinder has been an outstanding Chief Executive of the Geographical Association. Over his eleven years of energetic and committed leadership, he has worked tirelessly to support the geography education community, resulting in unparalleled levels of engagement with the Association’s activities and a doubling of its membership. Alan is a skilled and influential advocate for the discipline while also being a generous mentor, colleague and friend. While sad that he will be moving on from the GA, I congratulate him warmly on his new roles at the Regional Studies Association.

We are delighted to announce that the new CEO of @regstud will be Alan Kinder @GAChiefExec. Read the full story https://t.co/hdcPG7DkHp pic.twitter.com/vi0PtAzYZe

— Regional Studies Association (@regstud) November 2, 2023

Thought for the Day

From the GA President for 1972, teacher Alan D Nicholls.

"We see the demands on the teacher changing, and in particular his [sic] former role in describing the world is usurped by the television, radio and cinema. 

Now he has to equip his pupils to live critically and, if possible, creatively in this smaller, new world of the jet plane and computer.

 This I think is a powerful argument that a sabbatical year for travel should be provided so that they, having seen something of the world for themselves, can correct wrong impressions which their pupils may have received from the various media."

NICHOLLS, A. D. “Environmental Studies in Schools.” Geography, vol. 58, no. 3, 1973, pp. 197–206. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40568109. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.