As I study geography, I find it hard to read the news these days and I refuse to accept that we as a society consider religion as an undergraduate subject, while geography can only be studied up to 10th standard and not found as a matriculation subject. I have witnessed the undermining, minimization, ignoring and relegation of this science to the periphery of public interest in Romania, but from the same position as a geography graduate, I understand perfectly why this happens.

I chose to enter the Faculty of Geography out of pure passion. I was lucky enough to take my first steps in this discipline under the guidance of an old-school teacher – as loving as she was strict – and high school allowed me to easily apply this knowledge to Olympiads and competitions, so I entered college without emotions. Once there, I discovered a changing world where old leaders with deep knowledge but tyrannical accents were beheaded one by one by dubious characters. The disorganization was so great that for some subjects my knowledge from high school was enough, I was correcting individual seminarians or worse, and the practical applications were mostly trips.

In researching, from a geographical and social perspective, why certain spatial planning works have been done, I have discovered that geographers rarely make decisions. Later, working with numerous prime ministers, ministers and secretaries of state, I learned that it is still rare to surround decision-makers with geography experts. Of the 33 post-December years, the Ministry of Natural Resources was headed by geographers, ecologists, or environmentalists in only 3 years, while the recent leadership of the National Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Agency was headed by accountants, computer mathematicians, or lawyers. On the other hand, the Ministry of Development, Public Works and Administration provides an impressive amount of authority for territorial development and spatial planning, but is headed by lawyers and economist engineers, while the State Secretary for Tourism in the Ministry of Enterprise and Tourism is a geomorphologist. So the disorganization of geographers goes beyond the university environment.

In my foreign delegations, I had the opportunity to learn about the many ways in which geographers participate in the development of their countries – the top, all of which are economically and socially more developed than Romania. I am not suggesting that there is a causal relationship between the two, only that more developed democracies and functioning evidence-based decision-making systems recognize the added value that geographers bring. For example, in France

In the absence of a permanent lobby of our guild to take its rightful place at the head of the authorities, this space has been filled by other professions – notably economists and lawyers, as well as engineers. These professions knew how to market themselves as “all-rounders”—pardon the oxymoron—and adapt their discourse and outcomes to the societal agenda and political issues of the moment. Thus, ostriches-camels were born in the form of legislation specific to geographic areas, reinterpreted through the lens of the layman.

The geographer’s advantage is a systemic perspective. He also understands the contribution of the biological component and the anthropogenic influence, the mechanical influence of water forces and how the appearance of the city affects the circulation of the air and all the harmful substances in it, even if he does not. know any of them in depth. Sometimes it is not even necessary, so we work interdisciplinary. This systematic approach is taught and encouraged as early as 5th grade, gaining particular importance through items on the BA exam (and in the past also on the aptitude test!). Questions like “why is agricultural production in country X based mostly on livestock?” encourages critical thinking in future adult students and forces them to synthesize information from climatology, pedology, agronomy, economics, and international relations.

Despite all the tools that our science offers, it seems that geographers in Romania have been beaten in trying to promote their profession. This is partly due to the fact that a significant part has not mastered the subject properly and is doing it at a low quality level. Other reasons are the internal micro-political struggle in schools and faculties, which prevents them from looking beyond the walls of their own educational institutions, or, simply put, the associated arrogance and lack of enthusiasm. In this context, the removal of geography from the positions it occupied in secondary school programs can only be a logical consequence of all the above. – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro