Hilary Wilce: Michael Palin? He won't save poor old geography

Poor old geography. No one wants to take it now. Today's schoolchildren find it so dull it's about to slip off the curriculum map. But look; here comes the Government riding up with a £2m rescue plan!

Will it work? Will it persuade kids to get down with deserts and find atlases awesome? Almost certainly not. For starters, it is gimmicky, and no one should try to sell cheap gimmicks to today's savvy pupils. Posting off a free copy of Michael Palin's book Himalaya to every secondary school (Michael who?) is going to do nothing for anyone except Palin's publisher.

Second, it is patronising. The idea of sending celebrities to far-flung places so that they can gush about Bolivian salt flats or the skyscrapers of Chongqing will do little for the subject. The children will see it for exactly what it is - a slick of sparkly sugar to help the medicine go down.

More promising is the idea of sending young graduates into schools to drum up enthusiasm. With genuine passion, you can switch children on to anything, and it would be good for pupils to see what jobs a geography degree can lead to.

But have the authors of this plan actually been to a geography faculty? The average geography student, though probably perfectly nice and interesting, is about 90p short of a pound when it comes to charisma and communication skills.

Dr David Lambert, chief executive of the Geographical Society, and Rita Gardner, director of the Royal Geographical Society, have been appointed subject advisers to Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Education and Skills. They know the dimensions of the problem. They also know of the few green shoots of interesting geography here and there.

But the problem is so much bigger than any of the proposed solutions. Geography is a wonderful, varied subject that makes students adept at absorbing complex information and synthesising variables. Geographers should be - and are - employable in hundreds of fields.

Geography deals with the whole spectrum of life on earth, from the molecules of rocks to the global sweeps of war and migration. It knows there's no false divide between the arts and sciences and, unlike its curriculum bedmates, such as English and history, it does not falsely inflate human affairs over their environ-ment, but understands that our planet is a shifting, complicated system of which people are only one part.

In a world that faces climate change, pandemics, drought, war, energy shortages, mass migrations and terrorism, that viewpoint is crucial. There is no subject on the school or university curriculum more relevant to life today, or better able to help young people to understand the world they are growing up into.

But geography no longer does the business. Years ago, when I chose to study it at university, I did so because it felt immediate and exciting; not just something you learnt about from books, but something that was all around. And my geographical education has stood me in fine stead through adult life. But I have watched helplessly as, one by one, my three children have thrown in the geographical towel, defeated by tedious lessons on coastal currents and bored to tears by pedestrian coursework on local shopping habits.

Both Ofsted and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority have identified geography teaching as "poor" and "weak" - shorthand for saying that the curriculum hasn't been updated for 20 years, lessons are uninteresting, too many geography teachers are just plain bad, and too many geography lessons are taught by non-geographers who would be pushed to pinpoint Manchester on a map, or explain that tectonic plates aren't something you eat your dinner off.

The rescue package tries to address these issues, but it all looks like too little, too late. A new website? OK as far as it goes. More resources for key stage 3? Fine, but what about primary schools, and the top end of secondaries? Fieldwork and leadership training for teachers? Fair enough. But what about more classroom training? What about a complete kick up the backside for initial teaching training? What about throwing out that tired curriculum and going for a fundamental revamp that takes into account the way things are now?

Geography is a joke among modern schoolchildren, and even those who carry on with it up to 16 often find that the siren calls of psychology and media studies are too strong to resist as they choose their AS options.

It shouldn't be like this, but only a root-and-branch reform of the way the subject is taught is likely to have any chance of turning the tide. This package isn't it.