Letter: Teachers are taught the wrong things

Sir: In your article on teacher training you refer to "popular subjects such as English, history and psychology." How is it that geography always seems to get missed out of these not infrequent lists?

Last year, 1995, at GCSE level geography ranked seventh in the subject list of entrants with 295,229 candidates, 11.3 per cent up on 1994. History was next with 239,524, an increase of 5.33 per cent. In 1995 there was an increase of 10.3 per cent so geography is more than holding its own.

At A-level, geography had 43,426 entrants and ranked fifth as against history with 42,694 in sixth place.

Sterile statistics do not make great headlines but there does seem to be a bit of a blind spot about modern geography, which has long left the capes, bays and gazetteer attitudes behind. Geography, even at school level, has entered the world of applied studies in landscape management, marketing, tourism, transport systems, concept mapping, IT and urban development and planning.

GEOFFREY SHERLOCK

The Geographical Association

Amersham,

Buckinghamshire