Geography and politics – an interesting mix

Grant Kleeman

High school geography and politics don’t ordinarily go hand in hand, but as Grant Kleeman has found, politics played a significant role in deciding what kids were studying in the early 1990s.

There was a highly charged political climate in the 1990s. A conservative Liberal Government ran New South Wales and Australia welcomed a new Prime Minister who had a progressive radicalism.

“The election of a reformist conservative Government in NSW and the appointment of Paul Keating in 1991 resulted in an intensification of cultural conflict that simultaneously enraged and enthused activists on both sides of the cultural-political divide,” explains Kleeman. “By the 1990s syllabus content became one of the main vehicles by which the preferred cultural visions of competing interests could be advanced.”

Kleeman, a Lecturer at Macquarie University’s Department of Education and PhD candidate, has spent the past six years looking at the cultural conflict in regards to the development of the 1992 New South Wales Geography Syllabus.

He has examined curriculum development through the cultural-political context of the time. A belief in the potential of schooling to transform lives, by both progressive and conservative interests, contributed to education becoming one of the most keenly contested arenas of public policy.

“At times of heightened cultural conflict, the nexus between education and power becomes more apparent with various groups seeking to influence what is to be included and excluded from documents and textbooks,” Kleeman says.

Participants in the ‘syllabus policy community’ sought to advance a particular agenda or thwart the agendas of those with which they disagreed. This was combined with tensions in the community and resulted in public debate in the Sydney Morning Herald.

“The significant thing is that it transformed the notion of a perspective in curriculum in New South Wales because it went beyond geography to be picked up in other subject areas as well,” he says.

Kleeman has used interest group theory to analyse this process. Interest group theory is built around the notion that there are multiple world views. People look at issues and phenomena differently based on their own cultural heritage and background.

“What I have essentially found is that this theory is a particularly effective lens through which to analyse the political and social dynamics of a syllabus development committee,” Kleeman explains. “Also, I have discovered how the dynamics of that committee impact on the selection of content and method.”

The result of the geography syllabus conflict was a forced compromise between the two parties following ministerial intervention.

Kleeman, who has been kept particularly busy over the last two years writing textbooks, researching and writing his thesis, teaching and doing consultancy work, is hoping to submit his thesis in early April. He is currently on study leave in the United Kingdom and Europe looking to generate articles as a result of his research.

For further information contact Kleeman via e-mail: grant.kleeman@mq.edu.au

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