V C Spary

While writing other entries, e.g. the one for Leonard Brooks (1951 President), I was linked to the William Ellis School.

I found this image on their website - I taught in a room with a similar vibe early in my career, and my own school days were in a room with one of those globes in the corner, which tended to get stuck in position. There were also roller boards, and a raised dais at the front, and heavy dark wood furniture with moldings on the top. I like the addition of explorers names around the top of the walls.

The teacher shown here, wearing a Masters gown in 1939 is identified as V C Spary.

This room was apparently unchanged up to 1972.

He wrote a Junior Reader textbook, published in 1926

He was also connected with the GA for many years.

He organised meetings / conference related events in the 1920s and the 1930s.

Apparently the conference dinner organised by Mr and Mrs. Spary was a very popular social occasion at these events.

He also edited and wrote other books, and wrote book reviews for The Geographical Teacher.

Here's a mention in 1935 below:

“EDITORIAL.” The Geographical Teacher, vol. 13, no. 1, 1925, pp. 1–3. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40556432.

Also published in 1931:

Spary was also involved with the Tours committee. I have blogged separately about the wonderful (and very nicely priced) tours the GA ran across Europe for some years. These would have been to a Europe that has now disappeared and even then, changed after the First World War. Fascinating times!

Here's a mention from the journal 'Nature' in September 1925:

https://www.nature.com/articles/116414a0.pdf

Mr. E. E. Lupton gets another mention here.

GA Study Tours - 2022

The last few GA Study Tours have unfortunately had to be cancelled, but there are now plans for a tour to Nicaragua in 2022. Details are shown below, and were also featured in the latest GA Magazine.

Previous tours have involved a great many Presidents in leading them, and also participating in them... previous blog posts with the label 'Study Tour' are worth reading.

Pikes Peak

Thanks to Jeremy Krause for the image of Pat Cleverley and Sheila Jones, two former GA Presidents in Colorado on a GA tour 25 years ago. They are at Pikes Peak.

See the recent announcement about the passing of Sheila.

1970: Canada Study Tour

The 1970 Study Tour was 50 years ago. It was the Trans-Canada tour, and an interesting event for the GA. The tour took a large group of educators to Canada - the largest ever GA tour.  There were 152 people involved, who travelled to locations across Canada.

Graham Humphrys told me of his involvement in February 2021

In the early 1970s I was one of the leaders on two field excursions to North America for Geography Teachers organised under the GA banner. 

The first was Trans Canada in 1971 and the second down the western Cordillera in 1973. (Bill Balchin and Alice Coleman were the main organisers for both and I think they may have been based in the Isle of Thanet GA Branch)

Study tours are still continuing now - run by the International SIG.
2020 saw the tour to Malawi.
I have previously blogged about a tour to Poland run by Patrick Bailey, which Chris Kington told me all about.

The 2021 GA tour to Nicaragua was launched in the latest issue of the GA Magazine.
More details will come later in the year.

Gladys Hickman

Updated October 2023

Another influential person in the life of the GA was Gladys Hickman.

She was described in this piece in the GA Magazine as "an inspirational enthusiast for geographical education". She was made an Honorary member of the GA.
She was born in 1912 in East Sussex and grew up on a sheep farm on Romney Marsh.
She gained a first in Geography from UCL and took part in the first land use survey of Great Britain, becoming a close friend of former GA President Dudley Stamp.
Gladys was linked with the Bristol GA branch, having worked in teacher education at Goldsmiths and then Bristol University.
She worked on the Schools Council 14-18 project.
She was a well travelled geographer, and chaired the GA's Field Group in the 1960s and helped launch the Study Tours which the GA's International SIG still runs to this day.

She was also the tutor of former GA President Sheila Jones who told me in a personal communication:
Education year (1950-51), was a revelation with Dr. Gladys Hickman who introduced us to fieldwork opportunities and was a great innovator. Many of her students owe much of their success in teaching to her.

Sheila also wrote a history of the GA Bristol branch. This piece in the GA Magazine gives a flavour of her work.

She attended the 1993 Centenary Celebration of the GA, and Sheila Jones remembered her being there and wrote a little note in the letters she sent to me.

She was working into her 90s in retirement in Edinburgh, and supporting the work of the RSGS.


She wrote a book about Africa which stayed in publication for many years.


She died in 2006, and an appreciation was featured in the GA Magazine and an obituary in the Geographical Journal.


I read about Glady's life in this book as well.


Source:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=p_xfuY8CJ48C&pg=PT115&lpg=PT115&dq=%22marguerita+oughton%22+sheffield&source=bl&ots=xln_U09sEO&sig=ACfU3U0BVaFI8t74PC7xxPHMiijd8QoLyQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjbrsfys43pAhXKQEEAHeGlCCIQ6AEwAnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

An Obituary, written by her son Richard, was published in The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/oct/19/obituaries.mainsection

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0028-8292.1975.tb00753.x

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6xWsAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA1913&ots=Tsc_l8fz68&dq=gladys%20hickman%20geography&pg=PA1915#v=onepage&q=gladys%20hickman%20geography&f=false

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00167487.2007.12094183

Updated August 2021

Found this in my Flickr account. It's a book in the Victorian Schoolhouse at Gressenhall Rural Life Museum a few miles from where I live in Norfolk.

Source:

https://epdf.tips/complex-locations-rgs-ibg-book-series.html

Poland Study Tour

I saw this book when meeting Chris Kington in early 2020.

He described the Study Tour that he went on to Poland in 1990, and described an evening when those involved were left waiting to be picked up and there was a power cut which meant their plans were temporarily halted.

Patrick Bailey, who was involved in leading the trip, apparently picked up some chalk and drew a map on a blackboard, and someone (it may have been Chris) took a picture of the result. It was drawn from memory and showed the landscape they had passed through that day to put it into context. The first edition had this cover, but later editions apparently had a different cover to reduce costs of printing.

Quite a lost art, the coloured chalks on blackboard. I remember having a colleague: Ian Stockwell, my Head of Department, who was rather good at this when I first started teaching in the late 80s. Lots of block diagrams and the words PLEASE LEAVE so that all the groups could copy it into their exercise books.

I got hold of a copy via Amazon, and although dated, it's a good reminder of how we used to do things in regional and local studies. It was published in November 1990.

This was my memory of the circumstances.

References
A piece on camera and blackboard written by Patrick Bailey in 1960...
Bailey, P. J. M. “Blackboard and Camera: Some Combined Uses in the Teaching of Geography.” Geography, vol. 46, no. 3, 1961, pp. 232–237. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40565264