Environment anil Plamiinn I): Society and Space 1998, volume If), pages 757 77<l

Down to earth? Geography fieldwork in English schools, 1870-1944

Teresa Ploszajska Environmental and Biological Studies Department, Liverpool Mope University College, Mope Park, Liverpool LI6 9JD, England; e-mail: ploszajt@Iivhope.ac.uk Received 29 March 1997; in revised form 18 February 1998

Abstract. For a practice so central to the discipline, geography's fieldwork tradition has attracted surprisingly little historical analysis, and its ideological significance for popular education in the past remains largely unexamined. In this paper I discuss the role of school fieldwork in the context of wider cultural and educational, as well as geographical, discourses. I begin by exploring the increasing scope and sophistication of outdoor activities in the locality of the school which, contrary to common assumptions, were an integral component of geography lessons from the early 1870s. This leads to closely focused discussion of systematic Local Survey, a practice often taken to characterise intcrwar school geography. Finally, I consider residential fleldtrips to entirely unfamiliar environments in distant localities which were, I suggest, manifestation of a far broader 'culture of the field* that increasingly suffused popular culture in Britain during the period. In sum, I argue that, whether in familiar local surroundings or unknown distant areas, fieldwork was most highly valued for its social, moral, and civic benefits, rather than for its contribution to geographical education, narrowly defined.

Introduction Fieldwork is often taken to be synonymous with the study of geography. Indeed, the current syllabus for National Curriculum Geography demands the provision of Field-work to pupils in all English schools from Key Stage 1 (age 5) onwards (DFE, 1995). This is generally thought to mark a radical and progressive break from 'traditional' school geography, which was almost invariably characterised until recently as having required passive pupils merely to assimilate preordained information passively from within the confines of the classroom (see, for example Foley and Janikoun, 1992). Taking children outside, it is argued today, puts them in touch (often quite literally) with authentic experiences to which they can respond in creative ways, thus learning particular geo­graphical skills whilst furthering more general personal development (Wass, 1990). At university level, fieldwork has long been viewed as an essential component of geography degree programmes in Britain (Gold et al, 1991). Recent government guidelines recom­mend that all geography students should be exposed to a specified minimum amount of fieldwork within their undergraduate programmes (HMI, 1992). Its inclusion is generally justified in terms of a loosely defined and seldom questioned set of perceived learning outcomes. Typically, these include skill acquisition and reinforcement, experiential learning, and response to the challenges of unfamiliar environments (McEwen, 1996). In addition, fieldwork is valued for initiating students of all ages into the traditions of heroic exploration upon which the spirit and purpose of geography are, according to many of its historians, founded (Cameron, 1980; Freeman, 1980; Livingstone, 1992).

Despite widespread assumptions to the contrary, assertions such as these have little novelty in relation to school geography. Fieldwork has long been central to both the theoretical discourse and pedagogic practice of popular geographical education. Its origin in schools is often assumed either to have seeped down from educational practices in university departments, or to be the result of Pestalozzian theories (Buttimer, 1994; Stoddart, 1986). As a multisensory activity, fieldwork certainly exemplified many of Pestalozzi's educational ideals (as well as those of Rousseau, Froebel, Dewey,

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Montessori, and Piaget). However, whereas these influential names were appropriated by geographers in order to legitimate the practice of modelling (Ploszajska, 1996a) they were rarely invoked explicitly in support of fieldwork. In the literature on geographical education, the wisdom of enabling pupils actively to explore the world for themselves was seldom questioned. Discussion surrounding its principles and practices hinged, rather, upon the quintessential nature of geography and the ideological purposes of education more generally.

Within the academy today, most geographers acknowledge the centrality of field-work to their discipline. Yet individual interpretations of the practice vary widely. Stoddart, for example, suggests that 'real' geography can only take place in the field, where knowledge arises from direct physical, mental, and emotional experiences (Stoddart, 1986). Full understanding, he argues, is achieved by personally confronting phenomena in their 'natural' state. In sum, for Stoddart fieldwork is as much con­cerned with physical challenge and enjoyment as with inspiring original contributions to geographical knowledge. Rose has recently provided a searching and thoughtful critique of this interpretation. From a feminist perspective, she argues that fieldwork is "an example of geographical masculinities in action" (Rose, 1993, page 65). It is, she suggests, a tradition predicated upon a heavily gendered and power-laden distinction between (feminine) Nature and (masculine) Culture which underlies and defines much of geographical knowledge. Furthermore, it is now beginning to be recognised that disciplinary practices not only produce particular kinds of knowledges but also pro­duce gendered subjects who are differently positioned in relation to those knowledges. The educational implications of these issues in relation to fieldwork are only now beginning to be explored through qualitative and empirical research into the attitudes and experiences of undergraduate students (Maguire, forthcoming). The single detailed examination of the induction of differently gendered pupils into the discourses and disciplinary practices of geography through the (in this case, Australian) school cur­riculum focuses exclusively upon classroom activities (Lee, 1996).

In sum, geography's fieldwork tradition has attracted surprisingly little analysis and its ideological significance for popular education remains largely unexamined. In this paper I argue that an historical perspective is crucial to improving our understanding, both of fieldwork's widely-accepted centrality to the discipline and of its probable and potential educational outcomes. Framed by two Acts of major educational reform, the period under study here encompasses what is generally regarded as the zenith of British imperialism. It includes also the interwar years (all too often discussed in isolation) and extends into the Second World War to encompass debates surrounding national reconstruction. This facilitates an exploration of the changing discourses and practices of fieldwork in relation to broader geographical, education, cultural, and political contexts in transition. In the first section of the paper I discuss the increasing range of outdoor activities through which pupils learned to observe and understand everyday geographical phenomena in their immediate locality. Particular attention is then given (section 2) to systematic Local Survey, which came to characterise interwar school geography. Last, in section 3 I consider fieldtrips to unfamiliar, distant (usually rural) environments. These, I suggest, were but one manifestation of a far broader 'cult of the field' which increasingly suffused popular culture between 1870 and 1944. In sum, I argue that throughout the period under consideration issues of patriotism and notions of citizenship (sometimes competing and/or contested) remained central to discussions surrounding school geography fieldwork. Fieldwork was viewed as a practice which might improve children's geographical knowledge (narrowly defined) but which was most greatly valued by both geographers and educationalists for its furtherance of popular patriotism and particular versions of active citizenship.

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1 The development of local fieldwork The prevalence of Local Surveys during the 1920s and 1930s is among the few aspects of school geography deemed noteworthy by most historians of the discipline, Typically, they attributed this to the work and enthusiasms of Geddes and Dudley Stamp (see Beaver, 1962; Board, 1965; Livingstone, 1992; Rycroft and Cosgrove, 1995). These men certainly played high-profile roles in the promotion and development of Local Surveys (see section 2). But its seeds were sown by School Inspectors [Her Majesty's Inspectors (HMIs)] who, from 1870 onwards, placed increasing emphasis on the value of a school's grounds and locality as resources for geography lessons. They suggested that geography, if taught by personal observation and active experience, became a fascinat­ing and relevant school subject, rather than a tiresome mnemonic exercise (for example, Rowan, 1878; Smith, 1873).

Under the prevailing *paymcnt by results' funding arrangements, schools tended to respond promptly to Inspectors' directives. For example, it thus became common practice for children to learn the points of the compass in relation to their own position in their playground rather than as abstract map symbols. Introducing fundamental geographical principles in this way, teachers noticed, was an effective means of ensur­ing children's genuine understanding and interest (Alford Smith, 1920; Blakiston, 1888). Many also remarked that such exercises introduced pupils to geography as a discipline founded upon accurate observation and rational deduction (Davis, 1900; Herbertson, 1896). Elementary field exercises of this sort provided firm foundation for subsequent measurement and mapping (Board of Education, 1905), Textbook schemes of teaching cartographic understanding had long adopted a local-to-global approach, commencing with a map of the schoolroom or playground (for example, see Woodbridge, 1829, cited by Maddrell, 1998). From 1882, this technique became compulsory, the Educational Codes requiring Standard 1 children to explain an accurate scale plan of their school and its grounds in their annual examination (this remains a recommended component of the current UK syllabus for National Curriculum Geography). Involving pupils in the preparation of this document proved a reliable means of ensuring that they were able to demonstrate adequate understanding when questioned by the Inspector. It therefore became usual practice for children to spend much of their first year of school geography surveying and mapping their school's premises. The intensity of competing land-use pressures in London, lamented by some as precluding adequate fieldwork opportunities (Anon, 1903; Blakiston, 1887), was used to advantage by many of its schools. Field classes held in rooftop playgrounds gave geography pupils a bird's-eye view of their surrounding areas (LCC, 1911). This facilitated comparisons of reality with map representations—an essential prerequisite of cartographic understanding according to many experts (Montefiore, 1895). Indeed, a synoptic concrete view of the area from a high point came to be regarded as the ideal startpoint for all geography fieldwork (Barnard, 1933) and remains a basic technique today (Matless, 1992).

In addition to mapping exercises, an increasing number of schools organised systematic weather observations. Beyond opportunities of discovering basic geograph­ical phenomena like this, it was recognised early that each school's unique locality held a wealth of specific geographical features to which pupils would readily relate. The Educational Code of 1875 added "special knowledge of the county in which the school is situated" to the Standard III geography syllabus (Committee of the Council on Education, 1875, Article 28). Thorough understanding of their own environment, it was argued, provided children with a sound basis of comparison for studying distant places. Thus an integrated and progressive programme of geographical study evolved in many schools. In Yorkshire, for example, Inspector Holmes observed:

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"the facts of geography are, so to speak, a continuation of a child's daily life; he [sic] starts with the leading physical and social features of his own village and the country around it; from the village he passes to the district, from the district to the county, from the county to the country, from the country to the continent; or again he passes from his own brook to rivers in general, from his own glen to valleys in general" (Holmes, 1878, page 602).

It had already become conventional for textbooks to embody this kind of comparative approach. But as Maddrell (1998, page 87) points out, whether applied to physical features or cultural phenomena, this pedagogic technique may imply "that what is known by experience is not only the basis of literal comparison but is also the norm by which other things are evaluated". Nevertheless, throughout the period under discussion here professional geographers, educationalists, and teachers accepted uncrit­ically that familiar local examples should be used whenever possible. Geography, they believed, was best learnt from what pupils could actually see, experience, and deduce for themselves (Allanson Picton, 1885; Bird, 1901; Board of Education, 1931; Davis, 1892; Fairgrieve, 1926; Murche, 1902).

The crucial importance to geography of personal observation and sensory experi­ence in the field was widely accepted, then, even within the late-Victorian school system which was in general dominated by passive classroom learning. Nor was all early fieldwork confined to school premises, as many School Boards were keen to foster an awareness among children of their wider geographical location. Fieldtrips to parks and other public open spaces presented fewest financial and logistical difficulties, and by the 1890s were a standard supplement to classroom geography. In London, for example, more than twenty schools were within 15 minutes' walk from Hampstead Heath. This single location offered a wealth of fieldwork opportunities. Several nearby schools made regular visits to the Heath's Parliament Hill fields to view the city from an elevated perspective. Mr G Lewis of Kentish Town Road School based a progressive series of lessons around field excursions to the Heath. His Standard I and II pupils studied minia­ture capes, bays, and peninsulas in Highgate and Hampstead ponds. Children who, in the classroom, were "heartily sick of north, south, east and west" (Lewis, 1909, page 126) readily grasped their relationship when searching for buried treasure on the Heath!

For older pupils, Lewis devised the 'Colonisation Game', a series of visits to Hampstead Heath during which they imagined themselves to be exploring and devel­oping an 'undiscovered' country. While establishing imaginary mines, settlements, and industries, Lewis believed the children learned from actually feeling their ignorance of the fundamental resources needed to sustain human life. For example, while they eagerly imagined themselves discovering gold and diamond mines, it was usually necessary to point out to them that coal and iron were more useful resources. Planning transport networks, pupils paced out several possible rail routes, becoming physically conscious of the various gradients represented by the contours on their maps. Lewis encouraged them, "just as real colonists do" (Lewis, 1909, page 136), to name features after their own leaders, or familiar places and heroes from home. Rhetorical allusion to geography pupils in the field as explorers was common throughout the period under study. Indeed, it was positively endorsed as introducing children to geography as a subject of excitement and adventure. Pupils were actively encouraged to see themselves as heroic explorers following in the footsteps of its founding fathers:

"The pupil becomes a traveller, and the allotments beyond the city gasworks, dotted with the huts of individualistic settlers, or the arch where the canal runs towards the open country, where horses pull slow barges and peewits call across the boglands—these are the frontiers where he [sic] will record his own adventures"

(Cole, 1921, page 26).

Geography lleldwork in English schools, 1870--1944 76!

Nor would such allusions have been unfamiliar to geography pupils, as many of their textbooks used heroic adventure stories as ciphers for geographical knowledge and understanding (Ploszajska, 1996b). Although such approaches were (and remain) praiseworthy in terms of being pupil-centred, it is crucial to recognise that they also served to masculinise the contexts both of geographical practices and of the very definition of 'geographical knowledge1 itself (Maddrcll, 1998). For as Phillips (1997) has demonstrated, popular adventure stories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shared an overwhelming tendency to map distinctly masculinist European identities and colonial geographies. The consequent gendered experiences of this are exemplified in discussion surrounding school ficklwork. Geography mistress Miss E C Matthews, for example, described how on reaching Hampstead Heath her group of schoolgirls "scattered, inspired with the spirit of the true explorer, eager to notice and discover for themselves" (Matthews, 1910, page 315). Reports of all-female fieldwork evoked similar rhetoric throughout the period under discussion (see, for example Chubb, 1939). In itself, this might suggest that masculinity was no vital prerequisite of quasi-imperial geographical adventures. However, it is instructive to consider Matthews's (1911, page 772) description of her girls* fieldwork in the Brent valley: "We were discoverers—Stanleys, Livingstones'*. This highlights their ambivalent gendered positionality, in relation both to their activities and to 'geographical knowl­edge* itself. Certainly, their textbooks would have provided the girls with no female role models with whom to identify whilst in the field (Maddrell, 1998),

Returning to Lewis's 'Colonisation Game', after several lessons another class assumed the role of a second batch of colonists attracted by the glowing accounts sent home by the miners of 'Gold Town' and 'Coal Town*. This gave the exercise an added educational dimension:

"Each child was allowed to choose his [sic] own trade and great was the chagrin of the clerks, policemen and motordrivers to find that there was nothing for them to do, whereas the smiths, carpenters and bakers were soon hard at work" (Lewis, 1909, page 137).

Thus, he believed, the pupils assimilated vital information about the kinds of occupa­tion most likely to suit them for colonial emigration in the future. It is noteworthy that distinctly female occupations and activities are absent from Lewis's discussion. This perhaps reflects their absence from the 'game' itself. It certainly suggests that girls were considered less significant 'players' in this project of imaginative colonisation. Recent research among school pupils indicates that gendered discourses and disciplinary practices such as these serve to legitimate 'geographical knowledge' as the rightful preserve of boys alone (Lee, 1996). Nevertheless, Lewis's 'Colonisation Game' met with resounding approval from HMIs and educationalists, who applauded his methods of educating children for responsible imperial citizenship (Davey, 1909). But it was the increasingly numerous, detailed, and expansive local surveys undertaken by schools which represented geographical fieldwork's most widely acclaimed contribution to education for citizenship.

2 Local surveys Lewis's enthusiasm for local fieldwork was perhaps exceptional among elementary school teachers, among whom there were very few specialist geographers during the period under discussion. Nevertheless, HMIs' Annual Reports indicate that all over England more schools integrated geographical excursions into their teaching schemes each year. Under 'payment by results', local study actually paid: children grasped geographical terms and principles far more accurately when these were explicitly related to their own neighbourhood. Inspectors were delighted by the confidence and

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enjoyment with which pupils expressed geographical knowledge thus learned (see, for example, Boyle, 1877).

Early field excursions were usually short walks, planned to facilitate observation of noteworthy human and physical features in the vicinity of the school itself. Following the prevailing educational principle of working from the known to the unknown, these gradually encompassed the more distant reaches of the locality. Similarly, pupils' attention was called to increasingly complex phenomena. In this way, a growing number of schools developed a systematic and progressive course of local fieldtrips to comple­ment geography classwork (see, for example Bare, 1905). These schemes had a lot in common with the German study of Heimatkunde (literally, knowledge of home areas). Commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) to conduct a thorough investigation of geography teaching methods and materials at home and abroad during the 1880s, Mr J S Keltie had praised this focus on local knowledge in geography which he found to be the norm on the continent (Keltie, 1886). As Buttimer (1994, page 161) has recently observed, during geography's early years as an academic field in mainland Europe, although "imaginations continued to fly towards explorations of the few terrae incognitae ... they also turned to local environments of the homeland, where landscapes were read as indices of cultural belonging". Although distinctly different models of Heimatkunde emerged from individual countries, throughout Europe it was valued as a key promoter of national patriotism. Detailed knowledge of one's home area was regarded as a necessary prerequisite of love of one's fatherland. As the First World War loomed and England's confidence in its supremacy in the world order began to waver, geographers and teachers here began to promote systematic local survey as a means to similar ends. For example, London geography master Valentine Bell encour­aged his pupils to walk around the area after school, marking amenities, industries, residential areas, and the like on a blank map in much the same way as, later, pupils in their thousands conducted Dudley Stamp's famous survey of national land use. He saw this as an antidote for the "crass ignorance" (Bell, 1911, page 104) which children displayed in respect of their immediate district—a symptom, he felt, of a more general lack of interest in, and attachment to, their homeland. Mr H J Fleure suggested that surveys of this sort exercised a "spiritual influence" and that schools adopting the practice offered "a training ground for citizenship, a means of raising local government out of its political ditches" (Fleure, 1915, pages 89, 94; see also Matless, 1992). He conceived of local survey as an exercise with practical utility which would foster civic awareness and promote popular participation in local policy decisions. Local survey was said to vitalise the everyday and make the region live and breath for pupils rather than seeming mundane and inert. Thus, many believed, it awakened a sense of indi­vidual belonging to a higher collective—to the town, city, region, and nation. For enthusiastic proponent Mr P Geddes, herein lay survey's power to achieve a truly humanistic geography which exercised a spiritual influence and inspired patriotism (Matless, 1992).

Bell, Geddes, and Fleure all saw in the practice a means of strengthening senses of both local and national patriotism, together with notions of the shared responsibilities of citizenship. Certainly, many teachers reported its positive effects in these contexts. Three years of carefully planned local observational work by girls at one Harrogate school, for example, was reported to have led to a "progressive development of individual curiosity and interest in the particular problems of the region" (Todd, 1926, page 387). It was commonly assumed that "the complete understanding of the problems, difficul­ties and resources of one's own region will lead to a sympathetic understanding of the problems of the nation" (Young, 1925, page 137). However, during and after the First World War, geography teachers assumed ever greater responsibility for the promotion

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of a more global perspective. In 1916, for example, anticipating the for-rcaehing cultural and political effects of the war, one teacher remarked:

"A subject like geography, which deals with all human societies ... must inevitably rise in importance as the need for each well-equipped citizen to have a broad outlook of the modern world becomes more apparent. No parochial or insular view of human life can suffice for the British citizens of the next generation" (Anon, 1916, page 212).

Similar sentiments were echoed by geographers and educationalists throughout the interwar years (sec for example Dempster, 1939a; Evans and Evans, 1931; Searson, 1931). In his seminal Principles and Practice of Geography Teaching, Mr H C Barnard (1933, page 53) emphasised that the subject "should fire the pupil's imagination and so pave the way to a realisation of his [sic] common humanity with the rest of mankind. That is a high ideal ... but as teachers of geography we can do something to make it effective". Throughout the 1930s, popular geographical and historical education were held by many to offer the soundest possible means of ensuring international cooper­ation and fostering world peace:

"Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but the effect of teaching geography and history intelligently and in correlation in the schoolroom would be far reaching, and would contribute substantially to the avoidance of Waterloos in the future" (Spilhaus, 1931, pages 249-250; see also Anon, 1931).

Mr L Brooks, Divisional Inspector of London Schools and prolific author of popular geography texts, went so far as to assert that "without some training in the geog­rapher's characteristic outlook no man or woman can be said to be a fully-equipped citizen of today" (Brooks, 1939, page 259).

Within the context of heightened sensitivity to global interdependence and the fragility of world peace, it might be expected that the 'geographer's characteristic outlook' would have been self-consciously averted from detailed local survey. This was, however, far from the case as many teachers discovered that even apparently parochial fieldwork could be harnessed to inspire international citizenship. As geog­raphy master Mr J B Dempster of Dulwich Central School, explained:

"The most striking ties to the eyes of the child are economic. In the local factory he sees raw materials coming for manufacture, partly finished goods coming for completion, and the finished products being sent out. He sees machinery and fertilisers coming to the local farm and farm produce going away. Such links can be used to form natural transitions between the local and distant study ... This method of treatment not only provides easy transitions between home and foreign study, but also shows clearly the interrelation between the various parts of the world today" (Dempster, 1939b, pages 89-90).

The study of commodities in local shops illustrated pupils' reliance upon peoples and environments the world over for their daily necessities, fostering, many commen­tators felt, a sympathetic sense of common humanity (Horniblow, 1920; IAAMSS, 1935; LCC, 1911; Tiller, 1934). In sum, Barnard saw local survey as being an ideal antidote to the 'imperialist megalomania' to which he was explicitly opposed (Matless, 1992).

As recognition of its utility to a global outlook gained pace during the 1920s, local survey practices became increasingly formalised and coordinated. The Geographical Association (GA) organised training sessions in survey methods for teachers and arranged the regional pooling of results in order that schools might gain a detailed picture of their wider locality (Balchin, 1993). Specialist manuals contained suggestions for the teaching of local, regional, national, and global geography, all through local field survey (Fagg and Hutchings, 1930; Forsaith, 1932; GA, 1934). And as survey methods

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became more standardised, so too did the presentation of their results. By 1930 Winsor and Newton were producing a special series of pencils for annotation of base maps, marketed as 'Regional Survey Colours' (Fagg and Hutchings, 1930, page x). The scene was thus set for the well-documented Land Utilisation Survey (LUS) of Britain, coordinated by Dudley Stamp between 1930 and 1934. It is seldom recognised, however (although see Sheail, 1981, pages 144-145), that this arose directly from the independent appearance in 1929 of an Ordnance Survey (OS) Land Utilisation Map of Northampton. Under the superintendence of geography master Mr E Field, nearly all the county's schools cooperated in the project (PRO, ED111/118). The existing six-inch OS map was distributed by the Local Education Committee, and pupils conducted thorough field research to make tracings of their area denoting the distribution of cultivated land, pasture, woodland, buildings, and wasteland. This information was then transferred to a master copy to inform the production of an OS land-use map of the entire county. The Board of Education in Whitehall judged the project a resounding success—both as a practical exercise in geography and as an example in useful civic cooperation.

Dudley Stamp was equally impressed by Northamptonshire's example, which inspired him to coordinate a similar scheme throughout the British Isles. Impelled by a deep concern about agricultural decline in Britain and the consequent neglect of the countryside, Stamp was keen to create an accurate land-use record to inform planning policy (Stamp, 1952). Enlisting school children in its preparation offered, he believed, the additional benefit of instructing youngsters about their local environment in its national and international contexts. In sum, the survey fulfilled Stamp's conception of applied geography and education for citizenship. Involving about two hundred and fifty thousand pupils and teachers from almost ten thousand schools, the LUS remains among the most notable achievements of interwar geography in Great Britain (Balchin, 1993). It continues to be the model for much geographical fieldwork, and has been emulated several times, most recently during the summer of 1996 (Morrish and Walford, 1996; Walford, 1997).

Despite the scale of the LUS and the publicity it attracted, many schools continued to pursue highly individualistic local survey programmes. Each was, in its own way, of equal civic, social, and practical value and encouraged cooperative local politics with a national focus. In common with the broader regional survey movement of the period (see Matless, 1992), most encompassed not only every conceivable element of the locality's present geography, but also its past and possible futures. In Oxfordshire, for example, a series of village surveys during the 1920s followed the Le Play formula of 'place, work, folk'. Children aged between 9 and 14 explored their local history and geography by studying old maps, making observations in the field, and surveying individual households to determine their social and economic links with the wider world. Throughout, children were encouraged to conduct their enquiries in the 'spirit of explorers' (see section 1 above). The Board of Education considered the activities thoroughly successful in stimulating local interest and fostering broader patriotism in its global context. The modern young villager, it asserted:

"sorely needs a chance of developing local patriotism, if he [sic] is to use his pretty ample local government and other powers for the reconstruction, or for the preservation of the surviving good things of the countryside. And study of his neighbourhood, past and present, and of the natural as well as the social forces shaping his destiny, should help to develop constructive national patriotism" (Board of Education, 1928, page 13).

The results of the Oxfordshire surveys, including a series of sketch maps, were published by the Board to stimulate similar studies in other areas. Local surveys of several other schools reached print by other means. Pupils in several Birmingham schools, for example, were sponsored by Cadbury's to compile a brochure outlining the growth

Geography fieldwork in English schools, 1870™ 1944 765

of their city, and to consider its future development. Town planning and rebuilding occupied a significant part of this wartime publication and these sections were based upon the children's investigations among over 7000 local citizens into the condition of their life and work (Cadbury Brothers Limited, 1943).

Matless (1992) points out that the regional survey movement was characterised by its attention to the communication of materials. Although the local survey results of very few schools reached publication, the work of others gained widespread recognition through public exhibition. The impressive results of three years' systematic local field-work at Dulwich Central School, for example, were displayed at South London Art Gallery early in 1938 (GLRO, LCC/EO/GEN/1/122). In total, some 250 boys and girls aged 14 and 15 were involved in its preparation, working individually or in small groups both during and outside lesson time. Several teams produced a comprehensive land-use map of their locality, annotated with the exact locations of shops, factories, playing fields, public buildings, and so on. Others counted and categorised vehicles passing the main traffic foci in Cambcrwcll, gaining an appreciation of the importance of transport routes for local, national, and international business and trade. A group of girls produced geological sections of the district under the supervision of a member of the Geological Survey. Meanwhile, some boys collected spot heights from large-scale OS maps at the Town Hall, later interpolating 20 foot contours by covering the area on foot. Last, in small groups, the children visited various factories and businesses in the borough and presented reports to their classmates. In addition to thematic displays of these local research projects, a final group of exhibits illustrated project work (based on direct communication) on life and work in places around the empire which shared familiar local place names.

The exhibition was visited by over 4000 London school children, together with teachers, educationalists, and journalists from all over the world attracted by what was heralded as "the new reality in geography teaching at the school" (South London Press 1938). All commentators seemed to agree that Mr Dempster's scheme of local survey provided immensely valuable training of future citizens. As one journalist put it:

"Citizenship is not only a subject for study but also an attitude of mind, and the exhibition showed how both these facts can be exploited in the Geography Course in a central school. Dulwich Central School, under the leadership of Mr J.B.Dempster, is not only introducing into geography some direct teaching of Citizenship, but also creating an atmosphere of reality both for the home district and abroad which cannot but lead to a greater interest in and greater sympathy with the needs and problems of the world and its parts" (The Citizen 1938).

Under teaching methods like this, another reporter declared "That hundred-per-cent poll is a-coming yet!" (South London Observer 1938).

The benefits of local field surveys in educating geography pupils for full and active civic participation were widely recognised the country over. It was judged preeminent in providing children with practical training and experience of cooperative teamwork and communal efforts. Summarising the views of many of its enthusiastic promoters, lecturer at University College Leicester and influential textbooks author P W Bryan concluded:

"Local survey may also help and encourage the preservation and development of local amenities in both town and country, and develop a civic spirit, a sense of citizenship, a feeling for what is pleasant and beautiful, a hatred of what is ugly and sordid. Such a survey enables us to know our countryside better and appreciate the need for preservation from further spoliation" (Bryan; 1935, pages 203-204).

But the vast majority of children lived and went to school in urban areas, where fieldwork did little to acquaint them with England's rural beauty. Nor, in many cases,

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were they encouraged to view local open spaces as an amenity. For example, the only field which young R Roberts saw in early twentieth-century Salford was, as he put it, "the property of the city ratepayers. A notice said so, and added succinctly, 'Keep Off " (Roberts, 1971, page 239). For hundreds of thousands of English children like him fieldtrips to the countryside were held to promise an especially important educational influence.

3 Residential fieldtrips From the 1870s, as we have seen, fieldwork was a widely acclaimed means of teaching both geographical knowledge and (changing) notions of responsible citizenship. This was attributed to its providing children with opportunities to learn from their own observations and experiences. Yet no single locality could either provide all the illus­trative examples of geography's widely varied human and physical phenomena, or nurture all the necessary attributes of citizenship. Accordingly, despite the manifold logistical and financial difficulties, from the late nineteenth century onwards, teachers of geography took increasing numbers of children away from home for short periods to study entirely unfamiliar (usually rural) environments. Until the foundation of the Council for the Promotion of Field Studies in 1943 (Jensen, 1946), most nonlocal geography fieldwork took place on excursions described, generically, as School Journeys: visits of at least a week intended to "develop in some degree those aspects of education which necessarily lie outside the ordinary work of the classroom" (PRO, EDD77/209). It is, therefore, essential to consider trips taken during the period under study here in the context of the more general move 'back to the land' which increasingly suffused British society and popular culture. This goes some way towards understanding the consistent emphasis which was placed on the social, moral, and civic effects of field-trips, rather than upon the furtherance of narrowly defined geographical knowledge and skills. Furthermore, as Matless (1990) stresses, in their promotion and perfor­mance of fieldwork, contemporary geographers were consciously contributing towards (and, indeed, attempting to shape) the strengthening culture of nature.

From the 1870s onwards the visible effects on rural areas of declining agricultural production led to a general rush of pastoral nostalgia. By the later Victorian era, camping, walking, and cycling were enjoying their first flush of popularity and, as Marsh (1982, page 4) puts it, "love of the countryside became an article of faith", fundamental to notions of Englishness. This was perhaps nowhere more apparent than in schools, where long-neglected rural folk songs and traditions such as Maypole dancing entered the official curriculum. At the same time, what many considered the stupefying routines of (particularly urban) schooling attracted increasing criticism as unequal to the task of breeding and educating an imperial race. Most Victorians had tremendous confidence in the latent power of the countryside to ameliorate the per­ceived moral, social, and physical dangers of urban life (Ploszajska, 1994). This inspired a growing number of initiatives aimed at providing urban children with periods of education and recreation in rural England. Thus, in 1896 the Fresh Air Fund was established to provide country holidays for city children (Bristow, 1991; Donald, 1992) and a decade later Robert Baden-Powell founded the Scouting movement (Warren, 1986). Fresh Air Fund country holidays and the annual two-week Scout or Guide camp liberated many children from their urban lives in industrial conurbations. From the perspective of their leaders, though, the events provided crucial opportunities for social conditioning through training the children in middle-class manners and behav­iour (Springhall, 1977). The Board of Education promoted school journeys based on the principals of Scouting (PRO, ED77/212). It emphasised, in particular, the opportunities

Geography fieldwork in English schools, 1870- 1944 767

these provided teachers to instil habits of good living: "Both inspectors and teachers agree of the great materia! and moral value of the open air life, the broadening of the mental horizons of the child at the most impressionable age and the intimate association of a teacher and scholar which result from these visits to the country" (PRO, ED77/209).

Geographers too added their voices to the swelling tide of opinion in favour of outdoor rural education. Patrick Gcddes, for example, particularly commended Scouting for its promotion of a hunting (rather than militaristic) spirit (Matless, 1992), Later, Vaughan Cornish saw the countryside as the key to national welfare as it was a means of putting urban dwellers back in touch with their spiritual side. This, he believed, would lead to "reverence for both nature and the nation" (Matless, 1995, page 107).

Ideals of the healthy pursuit of rural knowledge and love of the countryside gained pace during the intcrwar years when there was a general shift in British social values, both ideologically and literally, 'back to the land', Rambling and hiking attained unprecedented levels of popularity, the Youth Hostel Association was founded, and numerous newly established local walking and cycling clubs arranged affordable holi­days exploring the English countryside. In addition, the National Council for Social Service managed the increasing amount of voluntary provision of organised holidays and school camps for children from distressed areas. Typically, these included a wide range of leisure and educational activities (including the study of local geography). Yet their main objective was to improve the moral and mental outlook of the boys and girls by bringing them into contact with rural life (Special Areas Commission, 1936). AH these kinds of activity were seen as providing means of consolidating national identity and promoting rational and responsible citizenship. As Matless (1996, page 428) puts it, rural landscape, was "presented as nurturing a mentally alert, physically fit and spiritually whole citizen". Although in many ways it challenged dominant ideas of 'progress', this concern with the rural should not be interpreted as a regressive or reactionary response against modernisation (Gruffudd, 1994). On the contrary, Matless (1995, page 93) describes it as underlying an "assertive and progressive" version of English citizenship. Fitness and youth were key words in the vocabulary of this 'new' England—the latter representing energy, vigour, and the future. Conscious of this, the Board of Education (1923b) promoted school camping trips, emphasising the unique opportunities these afforded for mental and moral development and the creation of a spirit of active citizenship:

"The spread of camping and the love of open-air will do much to build up a vigorous and healthy youth, a race of good future citizens, and so help to make good to some extent the wastage of the war" (Board of Education, 1923b, page 66). We can now trace the emergence and development of geography fieldtrips against

this backdrop of broader discourses and practices. With the educational activities of the RGS directed towards the training of prospective overseas explorers (Cameron, 1980; Mill, 1930), it was an educationalist rather than a geographer who first promoted school fieldtrips. Mr J H Cowham, lecturer on education at Westminster Teachers' Training College (1873-1904), had a particular personal interest in geography. An enthusiastic proponent of local fieldwork, he was equally keen to see longer trips become an established component of school geography. Accordingly, from 1877 he ran residential training courses each summer in Godstone, Surrey (Cowham, 1900). Here, student teachers experienced Cowham's conception of the ideal fleldtrip upon which to model future excursions of their own. To his great satisfaction, most did, indeed, subsequently lead similar fieldtrips to locations throughout Britain with their own pupils. According to the Cowham model, trips aimed to encourage students to observe and deduce causal relationships between natural and human phenomena in

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an unfamiliar environment. But in Cowham's opinion, the fieldtrip had educational benefits beyond the mere furtherance of geographical knowledge. In particular, he emphasised the social, physical, and aesthetic outcomes.

Until the 1918 Education Act the cost of school journeys had to be met by parents or charitable funds. In addition, trips of more than a single day's duration did not qualify as school attendance so had to be taken during holiday periods, necessitating that an adequate ratio of school staff were willing to sacrifice their own leisure time to accompany pupils. Such difficulties did not, however, preclude the gradual but percept­ible spread of residential fieldtrips as the nineteenth century drew to a close. In 1896 the very first residential trip with an explicitly geographical focus was taken from an elementary school, by a former student of Cowham's and a party of forty London pupils to Malvern for a week. A few weeks later a group from Liverpool spent a fortnight studying the topography and settlement of the Isle of Man (Lowndes, 1927). By the following year, sufficient geographical journeys were being taken for the government to commission a special report on the subject by C Dodd, a teacher trainer at Owen's College, Manchester (Dodd, 1898). Though Dodd emphasised their benefits to geographical knowledge, it was the wider social and civic significance of fieldtrips which dominated most official rhetoric (see, for example Leggard, 1899).

From 1903 onwards, George Lewis addressed numerous public meetings and pro­fessional conferences, promoting the benefits of school journeys both to geography and more broadly to education. Feeling that the practical difficulties facing organisers could be eased by collective action, he was instrumental in establishing the School Journey Association (SJA) in 1911 (Hollick, 1936). Part fund-raising, part administrative, and part promotional body, among the SJA's services were the negotiation of favour­able accommodation and travel rates, and (later) the provision of supply teachers to cover for staff absent on trips during termtime. Assistance of this sort ensured the immediate growth of the school journey movement. By 1914 some 3500 children from 115 London schools spent an average of 11 days on trips away from the capital. The London Local Education Authority believed that the physical, moral, and educational benefits of travel were of particular value to urban working-class children (Lewis, 1911) and, notwithstanding economic stringency during the interwar years, funded over 480 School Journeys in 1928-29 alone. Some 40000 school children in England and Wales, most from urban conurbations, were sent on trips during termtime that year, many to country camps owned by twelve LEAs (GLRO, LCC/EO/PS/1/53). By 1938, 14000 children from London alone made School Journeys of two weeks (PRO, ED101/69).

Although influenced by the particular interests of the teachers leading them, most School Journeys included geographical study. Many schools visited the same location annually to facilitate progressive studies over time. For example, throughout the 1930s Battersea Central School established camp for three weeks each summer at Cooden near Bexhill. The aims of the camp were:

"To leave artificial school learning and substitute seeing and discovering things for ourselves, looking for and noting geographical reasons for man's [sic] residence there and what he has done to make it more profitable and pleasant. The most important way of making this study is by using our eyes. Not only to look but to see, for to look means to direct your eyes with the intention of seeing and to see is to observe and understand" (PRO, ED101/69, School Journey Record, page 1).

The improvement of children's faculties of accurate observation was the specialist geographical skill which attracted most comment in discussions about residential field-work (for example, Broom, 1928; Reynolds, 1901). For many children, it was said, seeing was believing. Matless (1996, page 425) suggests that in the 1940s "the educated eye of the citizen, looking at landscape, was upheld as a potentially vital organ in

Geography ficklwork in English schools, 1870 1944 769

reconstruction", Yet although sight was an important medium of learning, it was recognised that complete geographical understanding arose from fully embodied field experiences which stimulated all the senses. As teacher trainer Mr V Davis put it:

"Our pupils have bodies, and those bodies are servants of Mind. We shall use these bodies to give sure and sound bases for intellectual conceptions. We can do this in our teaching of geography if, through the body, the mind is made aware of the time and energy required to climb a mountain (which the mind may climb in an instant, but which the body may only succeed in doing after hours or days of strenuous effort): of the weight and characteristics of the rock in a scree, by traversing one; of the beauties of mountain form and colouring, by beholding them; of the bitter cold of the mountain summit, by feeling it; of the feeling of nature in its constituent parts, and of the permanence of the whole; of a mountain cloud-cap by seeing it and being in it, for the hours of a long day; of the fierce noise and smoke of a fall of rock in Nature's process of denudation, by witnessing it; and of the quiet charm of a sunlit mountain tarn amongst the seemingly barren and wild environs, by sitting beside its waters and absorbing the spirit of the mountain" (Davis, 1920, page 233).

These principles were also relevant for fiekltrips to industrial areas. A party of school­girls from a London suburb, for example, were deeply impressed by the heat, noises, smells, and atmospheres they experienced on visits to various industrial works during a fieldtrip to South Wales in 1930. As one girl reported in the school magazine:

"The industrial visits gave a gentle knock at the doors of our memories, just to make us realise all that can lie behind the smooth and shining surface of a mustard tin. We knew that it must be hard work for the men to keep British products always up to standard; but we never understood what 'hard' really meant until we visited the steel works. We found men had to work under great difficulties, sometimes before great roaring furnaces, which nearly blinded us when the doors were opened. Others had to lift heavy troughs in front of an open door so that the boiling metal could run into huge ladles" (Sarjeant, 1931, page 522).

Others commented on the difficult and noisy work performed by the women who separated heavy sheets of steel with their hands bound up as protection against the frequent deep cuts which were an occupational hazard. Some girls were haunted by the dark, dank atmosphere of the coal mine, and a few judged that the stokers at the docks had the hottest and hardest job of all. Experiences such as these were believed to make invaluable social and civic contributions by teaching children, through direct personal contact, a sympathetic appreciation of the life, difficulties, and views of other people (Fairgrieve, 1926; LCC, 1911; Searson, 1931).

As individuals like Davis trained an ever increasing number of teachers, it is probable that a growing number of fieldtrips shared this emphasis on bodily and sensory experiences. Meanwhile at Oxford the growth of university field studies inspired a series of vacation schools for teachers (Unstead, 1949). From 1930, they could also attend training courses at a specialist field centre in Gloucestershire run by Miss C Simpson, former lecturer in geography at Warrington Training College. Here, alongside scoutmasters and university students, school teachers learned how to devise and lead an efficient and businesslike survey of an unknown region (Simpson, 1945).

Whether advocating a sensory and impressionistic approach or, like Simpson, an empirical scientific methodology, most commentators agreed that perhaps the most important objective of fieldtrips was to engender an affection for the nation. After all, as Barnard (1933, page 218) suggested in his best-selling geography teaching manual, "There is no better way of learning to love England than by getting to know her".

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During fieldwork, it was said, sensory experiences provided an appreciation of Britain's scenic amenities which would instil patriotism, inspire pupils to use the countryside for self-disciplined leisure, and teach them to give matters of planning due consideration in the future (Cornish, 1934). Children's presumed susceptibility to an aesthetic apprecia­tion of nature (Matless, 1996) rendered them an apposite target for the engendering of such habits and ideals. In addition, they represented the nation's future and it was deemed essential to mould them early into suitable models of citizenship. Teaching them how to behave in the countryside involved defining citizenship in strict counter-opposition to anticitizenship. The challenge, according to Geddes, was to encourage the former to the detriment of the latter (Matless, 1992). Certain kinds of antisocial behaviour (noise, littering, vandalism) were viewed as particularly out of place in the countryside. Thus, like organised groups of hikers and walkers, when engaged en masse in orderly, planned, disciplined fieldwork, city children were transformed from the fabled cockney nuisances into what Matless (1995, page 116) calls a "composed forma­tion in choreographed Englishness". In addition to inspiring patriotic attachment to the English countryside and suitable modes of citizenship, fieldtrips offered further, more perceptible, social advantages. Many commentators commended the marked improve­ment in pupils' health and vitality on returning from a spell of physical activity in the fresh air (see for example, Reynolds, 1901). In some urban schools, a long-term pro­gramme of physical training was incorporated into the fieldtrip preparations so that children were fit to walk long distances over unfamiliar terrain (Lewis, 1929). Sharing new experiences of this sort created a sense of camaraderie between pupils and teachers:

"the school journey gives the opportunity of widening the school environment, knocking down classrooms, wiping out the desk which is something of a wall between teacher and pupil, and bringing us suddenly into touch with our charges as fellow human beings and comrades in the journey of life" (Vernon, 1926, page 17).

Teachers were urged to capitalise upon this period of mutual esteem to bring their moral influence to bear upon their charges by encouraging courtesy, self-discipline, and cleanliness through their own impeccable example.

Conclusion Fieldwork, whether in familiar local surroundings or distant unknown areas, was widely considered as a means of encouraging children to recognise geography as a body of knowledge preeminently concerned with the real world, but perhaps most particularly the rural world. Its reality, they learned, was all around them and not merely confined to the pages of their textbooks. Wherever conducted, pupils were encouraged to view their fieldwork as practical exercises in active exploration and discovery. This was intended to stimulate their interest in geography as a subject founded upon, and entailing, excitement and adventure. As we have seen, however, disciplinary discourses and practices such as these constructed geography as a distinctly gendered body of knowledge and skills. In particular, feminine roles and female role models were con­spicuous only by their absence from most field activities. Informed by current theory and empirical research, I have argued that the gendered subjects of such geography fieldwork in the past are likely to have positioned themselves very differently in relation to what they were being taught. As Maddrell (1998) stresses, pupil-centred approaches may well have encouraged children to become independent learners, but they did not necessarily equip individuals to become independent evaluators of knowledge. There were, however, exceptions to the overwhelmingly gendered nature of fieldwork. J B Dempster of Dulwich Central School, for example, deliberately assigned groups of boys and girls to non-gender-specific tasks when undertaking their expansive local survey during the 1930s. Personal communication with his surviving ex-pupils indicates

Geography ficklwork in English schools, 1870 1944 771

that, some sixty years later, males and females alike retain a sense of authoritative ownership of the detailed local knowledge thus derived.

Anecdotal evidence from these same informants suggests that local survey engen­dered in many a particular attachment to, and active involvement with, their local area. Imbuing habits of informed and responsible civic involvement and of active citizenship was, as we have seen, widely conceived as the ultimate goal of all geography fieldwork.The notions of citizenship which were central to educational and geographical discourses shifted emphasis during the period under discussion. From an almost exclusively imperial focus in the 1870s, they had assumed a broader international orientation by the interwar years. Echoing the emphasis in contemporary textbooks (Maddrcll, 1998), they became a complex cocktail of civic, national, and international issues and concerns. Likewise, increasing stress was placed on the balance between rights and duties which citizenship entailed. Yet it was perhaps its intimate connection with the rural which was the central characteristic of the interwar concept of citizenship. Nor was this an exclusively English or British phenomenon. The notion that rural areas and populations sustained national character was prevalent throughout Europe at the time. As Gruffudd (1994) points out, efforts to physically and ideologically reorientate society 'back to the land' were adopted to serve a variety of political agendas, including the extremes of right and left. However, most of the consequent complexities and contestations surrounding concepts of citizenship remained submerged or implicit, within discussions of geo­graphical education and fieldwork.

Acknowledgements. The broader study on which this paper draws was funded by a British Academy Full-Time Studentship. Thank you to the various seminar and conference audiences who have heard all or part of this material in earlier, rawer, guises. Your input has been most valuable in its development. Particular thanks to Denis Linehan for drawing my attention to the activities of the National Council for Social Service. Suggestions and criticisms from Peter Jackson and two anonymous referees proved extremely stimulating and constructive in the final drafting stages.

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