The Elementary Social Studies: Sense and Nonsense in Integration

Abstract

The ultimate goal of all geographic education is to have our students think geographically for life. To this end, the five geographic skills sets allow teachers to use the inquiry approach to more accurately observe whether or not geographic thinking is actually taking place. As essential components of these geographic skills, fieldwork, journaling, and stories based on the field experience have proven to be effective tools of inquiry. This article demonstrates how a journal, kept by the author while on an advanced alliance summer institute to Russia in 1996, was used to write an original short story based on the author's fieldwork there. The author's experiences model the five geographic skills sets in developing lesson plans for the original short story, The Dragon and the Anchor. These activities allow the students to sharpen their geographic skills and develop a sense of place by studying the changes that have occurred in Russia since the fall of communism in 1991.     

Local responses to changed circumstances: Coalmining in the market economy in Upper Silesia, Poland

It is argued that the emphasis of much recent research into coalmining has been placed on international and national scale influences which affect coalfields as a whole; change at the intra-coalfield scale has received less attention. After providing a background to events in Poland during communism, attention focuses on developments since 1989, commencing with coalfield-wide influences. There follows an examination of the work of the state body Państwowa Agencja Węgla Kamiennego, which executes government policy at the local level, and whose membership is drawn from the coalfield region. This agency recommends the closure and amalgamation of mines, but otherwise rationalisation measures are left to the seven mining companies and the colliery managers. The restructuring which has been carried out is considered under five heads: organisational change within the collieries, employment, production and technical change, and ecological adjustment. While recognising the importance of the socioeconomic and political environment and geology, there is much evidence to suggest that intra-coalfield patterns are strongly determined by local decision-makers. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article: Portable Utopia: Glasgow and the United States 1820–1920. Bernard Aspinwall. Studies in Russian Historical Geography. James H. Bater and R. A. French, eds. Water and Sanitation: Economic and Sociological Perspectives. Peter G. Bourne, ed. Green Politics. Fritjof Capra and Charlene Spretnak. The Southern Cone: Realities of the Authoritarian State. César N. Caviedes. Women in Third World Development. Sue Ellen Charlton. Land Management: New Directions. David Chiddick and Alan Millington, eds. Geography and Ethnic Pluralism. Colin Clarke, David Ley, Ceri Peach, eds. Geomorphological Hazards in Los Angeles. R. U. Cooke. Regional Impacts of United States-Mexico Economic Relations. Alfonso Corona and Lay James Gibson. eds. Patterns of Jobs and Geographic Mobility. Torvald Gerger. Cities and Sickness: Health Care in Urban America. Ann Lennarson Greer and Scott Greer, eds. Neighborhoods: Their Place in Urban Life. Howard W. Hallman. Development and the Rural-Urban Divide. John Harriss and Mick Moore, eds. Patterns of Undocumented Migration: Mexico and the United States. Richard C. Jones, ed. Central Place Theory. Leslie J. King. The Geography of Western Europe: A Socio-economic Survey. Paul L. Knox. Regions and Resources: Strategies for Development. David T. Krisge, Daniel A. Seiver, Oliver S. Goldsmith and Michael J. Scott. Geography of Crowding and Human Response. A Study of Ahmedabad City. K. M. Kulkarni. Haciendo Pueblo. The Development of a Guadalajaran Suburb. Kathleen Logan. The Imperial Lion: Human Dimensions of Wildlife Management in Central Africa. Stewart A. Marks. Water in the Hispanic Southwest: A Social and Legal History, 1550–1850. Michael C. Meyer. Imlil: A Moroccan Mountain Community in Change. James A. Miller. Tourism in Canada: Selected Issues and Options. Peter E. Murphy, ed. David Harvey's Geography. John L. Paterson. Raster Scanning, Processing and Plotting of Cartographic Documents. Donna J. Peuquet and A. Raymond Boyle. The USSR and the Muslim World: Issues in Domestic and Foreign Policy. Yaacov Ro'i, ed. Environmental Perception and Behavior: An Inventory and Prospect. Thomas F. Saarinen, David Seamon, and James L. Sell. Incised channels, Morphology, Dynamics, and Control. Stanley A. Schumm, Michael D. Harvey, and Chester C. Watson. The Gap Between Rich and Poor: Contending Perspectives on the Political Economy of Development. Mitchell A. Seligson, ed. Twentieth-Century Richmond. Planning, Politics and Race. Christopher Silver. Land Conservation and Development: Examples of Land-Use Planning Projects and Programs. F. R. Steiner and H. N. van Lier, eds. Biogeography: Recent Advances and Future Directions. J. A. Taylor, ed. Late Quaternary Environments of the Soviet Union. A. A. Velichko, ed. H. E. Wright, Jr. and C. W. Barnosky, eds.     

Toponymy and the Communist city: Street names in Bucharest, 1948–;1965

Past studies of the Socialist/Communist city have paid only limited attention to the ways in which Communist regimes mobilised a wide variety of symbols in the urban landscape in order to legitimate and institutionalise the ideology of revolutionary socialism. This paper considers the role of street names in this process with particular reference to Bucharest, Romania during the 1948–1965 period. When the Communist regime came to power it embarked on widespread renaming of streets as one means of both `decommemorating' the pre-socialist regime and proclaiming the agenda and ideology of the Communist state. The new street names commemorated a variety of events and personalities from the history of Romanian and Soviet Communism. The impact of street names was amplified further through practices such as multiple namings and the spatial clustering of street names of high ideological resonances. The paper argues that Bucharest's street names can be `read' as a mirror of ideological change, changing constructions of national identity, and Romania's macro-political orientation (especially its changing relations with the Soviet Union).     

Rural diversification in Eastern Europe: Introduction

The decline in agricultural production and the inevitability of reduced employment on the land makes rural diversification an important priority. The papers in this collection outline the problem and indicate the range of options available, noting the differences between the northern and southern parts of the region. Attention is given to the settlement system because opportunity will vary according to the accessibility of urban areas. The tourist industry offers considerable opportunity but has implications for environmental conservation which should therefore attract greater attention. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.