The University of South Africa (Unisa) 1918–1948: the first transition,from colonial to segregationist institution

This article traces the first of what would become several significant transitions in the evolution of the University of South Africa (Unisa); that from University of the Cape of Good Hope (UCGH), an institution with a distinct English tradition loosely based on the ‘liberal’ constitution of the Cape Colony, to a more segregationist Afrikaner-dominated university by 1946. This was largely shaped by national politics, in particular the rise of Afrikaner nationalism, in the 1920s and 30s. Not only did Unisa become captive to Afrikaner forces, it also was strongly infiltrated by the Broederbond, which had as one of its objectives the holding of key positions in higher education in South Africa. In addition, issues of race now became a growing ‘problem’ as Unisa sought to fulfil its mandate to provide higher education for ‘non-Europeans’ in an era of segregation. However, it would be a distortion to portray this transition fom a simple binary perspective. There was ambivalence about the ‘liberalism’ of the UCGH that reflected the pressures for a new racial order at the Cape. Similarly, the extent of Broederbond influence at Unisa (and over national politics) should not be over-emphasised. Somewhat paradoxically, Unisa continued to accommodate nodes of liberal thinking within the institution, and in the 1960s resisted state attempts to be drawn into a scheme to construct an Afrikaans-only university in Johannesburg. Nevertheless, the essential conservatism and political acquiescence of the university to apartheid meant that the requirement to transform Unisa in the democratic era was all the more painful and complex.     

The Duke of Portland and his Agent: The Education Act of 1870

This article explores the ways in which the Duke of Portland’s Welbeck Abbey estate in Nottinghamshire reacted to the caveats of The Education Act of 1870. The Duke had in the past taken little interest in any school within his estate until it appeared that the new legislation would significantly impact the control he exerted. The situation was somewhat complicated as the 5th Duke was reclusive by nature and consequently his land agent William Cripwell was required to act as his representative to what essentially became an estate in conflict. The resultant furore, particularly at Gringley, between school, parishioners and clergy reveal the fragility of rural relationships. The expectation that the Duke’s agent had the expertise and ability to deal with the problems, which arose because of the Act, are a sign of the increasing professionalism of the land agent and the movement to a role beyond that of a traditional agriculturalist.     

Critical geopolitics and school textbooks: The case of environment-conflict links in Germany

This study explores the conceptual and empirical utility of studying school textbooks from a critical geopolitics perspective. School textbooks bind together various discourses, modalities and genres and can reflect the dominant knowledge in a given society. They therefore have a high potential to reveal the citational practices resonating between the domains of formal, practical and popular geopolitics. Studying school textbooks can also enrich the literature on children's and young people's (political) geographies by analyzing how the political worldviews and agency of young people are shaped by teaching materials. Empirically, the study draws on a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to study how environment-conflict links are textually and visually portrayed in German geography and civics textbooks. The results suggest that German school textbooks significantly reflect the depictions of environment-conflict links in political, media and (popular) science discourses and thus reveal crucial citational practices. Drawing on the environmental security literature, it is further argued that these textbooks convey problematic geographical imaginations: they overemphasize the risk of environmental conflicts, reflect ideas of spill-over effects threatening the global north, and portray people from the global south as irresponsible and threatening.     

美国1958年《国防教育法》颁布的原因

二战结束前美国颁布的《退伍军人权利法案》没有能够为战后国家经济、科技与军事发展提供强有力的智力支持。大约同一时期,作为进步主义教育的重要项目“生活调整运动”因其对学生个人兴趣、家庭、日常生活与人际关系的偏重,对学术标准的降低以及学术性课程的忽视而遭到学者的责难。1957年10月,苏联第一颗太空卫星“斯普特尼克1号”（SputnikⅠ）的发射成功标志着美国在与苏联进行军备竞赛中暂时处于下风。举国上下展开了对教育的诘难,《国防教育法》获得通过,联邦政府开始大规模卷入到教育调节与干预中,并成为教育改革的主角。     

意大利纸质文物保护工作与文保教育概述——兼论中华古籍保护人才培养

中国的古籍保护事业正极速发展中,却也面临了许多全新的问题与挑战。而意大利在文物保护工作与文物保护教育上的成熟做法,虽然不能完全符合中国国情,却有许多值得国内参考的经验;例如:文物保护各领域间的分工与合作,修复课程设计上的文、理、实践并重,文物保护社会教育的普及,合理的学时,循序渐进的课程安排,专业的师资以及人民对于文物保护工作的热情和对文物修复师的尊敬等。这些经验值得加以深入探讨与分析,以期从中汲取欧洲人的智慧,滋养中国的古籍保护大业与文物保护百年教育。     

“读经”讨论的思想史研究——以1935年《教育杂志》关于“读经”问题的讨论为例

“读经”问题的讨论往往不仅限于“读经”本身,它所涉及的问题其实更在于思想史。1935年《教育杂志》关于“读经”问题的讨论也不例外。讨论尽管观点不一,但绝大多数都能以“科学”的态度,对传统采取两分法,且反感“尊孔”以及附加于“读经”之上的诸种外在因素,这一点显然是五四新化运动影响的结果。而讨论最终得出的结论,更影响到了今日的教育。     

A case study on the revival of stone quarrying in the late eleventh century: St. Florent,Saumur and Notre-Dame,Noyers

One aspect of the late eleventh-century economic expansion in the west of France was that the abbeys of the region embarked upon an ambitious program of construction. Many houses decided to rebuild their abbey church, while the numerous small chapels and churches they received from the newly emerging class of castellans were rebuilt to serve as priories. All this required large amounts of building stone, which was difficult to obtain. For the abbeys of St. Florent, Saumur (Maine-et-Loire) and Notre-Dame, Noyers (Indre-et-Loire) texts survive that throw light on the intricate social and economic relationships that ultimately provided the abbeys with sources of building stone. One finds that the exploitation of quarries was intimately associated with the proliferation of towns and that the abbeys depended upon secular bequests of both towns and quarries to carry out their construction programs.     

A Centre for Excellence in Education for Sustainable Development

The English higher education landscape has recently experienced a significant change with the addition of 74 Centres for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETLs), each one devoted to a particular educational issue or theme. This paper highlights a CETL which is of special interest to geographers in that it is focused on the promotion of education for sustainable development (ESD). The CETL is based at the University of Plymouth, UK, and is tasked with the responsibility of embedding a whole-university approach to sustainability. It will also seek to encourage best practice more widely, working with other institutions regionally, nationally and internationally.     

Greening the University Curriculum: Appraising an International Movement

The declaration of the ‘United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development’ (ESD), Resolution 57/254, February 2003, provides the best yet occasion for higher education institutions (HEIs) to ‘green’ their curricula. The idea for the Decade emerges from a progression of high-level international conferences, beginning with Stockholm, 1972, that have seen ESD thinking move from general statements of intent to increasingly detailed specifications for action. There has also been a growth in awareness that the changes to the curriculum for sustainable development must suffuse all areas of education provision. They cannot be restricted to the environmental disciplines or ‘ecoliteracy’ modules or even to the classroom, but must be demonstrated by the whole of an HEI's approach to the world. Obstacles to implementation include: funding and perverse subsidies, departmental and disciplinary barriers, ivory-tower traditions in teaching that externalize and objectify the subjects studied and persistence of the obsolete mind-sets of the ‘industrial age’. These barriers may mean that change in HEIs will have to be driven by external processes, such as the transformation of primary and secondary education where the fragmentation of knowledge is less entrenched. However, there now seems to be growing agreement that HEIs should equip all their students with ‘environmental literacy’ and that sustainability should be central to concerns both in HEI curricula and in operational practice.     

Benchmarking in Geography: Some implications for assessing dissertations in the undergraduate curriculum

Internationally there is concern about assessment standards and the qualities of graduating students. In the UK this is resulting in the introduction of benchmarking by disciplinary communities, including that of geography. In that context the authors report on a project across social science disciplines, including geography, in one UK university, to examine and improve the assessment of undergraduate dissertations. The project examined what assessment criteria are currently published to students and identified some sources of inconsistency in applying them. It identified some potential core criteria and recommended ways of increasing transparency in applying them, so as to reduce inconsistencies and potential unfairness in marking. Implications for geography departments and the international disciplinary community are suggested and for the benchmarking exercise in British geography.