Great Geography!

08/03/2010

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Today I attended a Literacy Lead Practitioners day which was hosted at the Royal Geographical Society in London. On the way I was happy to renew my acquaintance with Shackleton ( I had taken his photo before for a set based on the statues in Charlie Fletcher's Silver Tongue book -http://tinyurl.com/yk8rtthweeblylink_new_window) and I took a new photo of Livingstone. The Royal Geographical building is fascinating inside, stuffed with interesting artefacts, pictures and books. We were led down to the archives where we were lucky enough to be shown the hats that Livingstone and Stanley were wearing on their infamous meeting in Africa. The chief librarian had laid out several journals from long ago travellers for us to peruse and they made fascinating reading. I particularly enjoyed a diary written by one Emilia Noel who died in 1950 having travelled to Eygpt, India, Kashmir and West and North Africa. In 1898 writing about Mandalay she remarked: "Kathleen says the moon shines more industriously than at home, the snowy look of everything under its light strikes one afresh every time." On Feb 10th of that year trouble was afoot - "There was a strike on among the B.I. officers and instead of starting at 1.30p.m. we got underway at 6 and were fortunate to get off at all, but 2 B.I. captains officered the ship under our own Captain" ....so little changes huh?! Once on board " I sat next to an East Indian. He informed us that stewed ship's cockroaches were a cure for asthma"! I do hope she did not take his word for this. I was enthralled reading this lady's memoirs and felt honoured to do so on International Women's Day - she seemed rather feisty and a woman after my own heart. 

You can take groups of students to visit the Society and they run several programmes to encourage the uptake of Geography in schools, the websites for these have many useful resources:

www.unlockingthearchives.rgs.org

www.whodowethinkweare.org.uk

www.geographyinthenews.rgs.org

www.geographyteachingtoday.org.uk

www.rgs.org/Learning&Leading


All in all it was a fascinating day and I'd love to go back and read more of Emilia's memoirs.

    
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