Tsunamis have been making their appearances all over the world from time to time. They have made their appearance long before Dec 26 last year, even near Sumatra and the Indian Ocean.
Folklore has kept the inhabitants of one island off Sumatra informed of the power and danger of tsunamis. Raja Cholan had written about them in India in the olden days. But who remembers all this if knowledge about it is no longer kept alive or taught in schools?
The subject of geography has long been forgotten by our education system - since the 1980s in fact. It is no longer part one of the core subjects for SPM and is no longer considered important at the STPM level. It is rare to find a student taking geography and then moving on to university to major in it.
A leading Thai academic had already called for geography to be included in both the school and university curricula, noting that last week's tsunamis had highlighted the importance of modern geographical knowledge.
"Geography is not just about what occurs on the land, but is also about geology, tectonic plates, magma under the earth. These new branches of knowledge must be integrated," he said adding that schools must draw up flexible curricula containing broad and in-depth knowledge with teaching materials being more diverse than at present.
It should be noted that what a small girl learned from geography saved lives in the recent tsunami incident.
But geography goes further than that. It touches on soil geography, ecology, physical geography, population, urban geography and transport geography to name just a few fields. It teaches us about slopes and gradients when it comes to construction and development along hill slopes . It teaches us about the mangrove swamps and what they do to control floods.
The lessons learnt in geography go on and on.
All my good geography teachers are no longer teaching geography. They have retired teaching English as geography is no longer needed to pass the SPM. Then you get students wanting to take geography at the tertiary level without knowing the basics like map reading and surveying, which was taught in Form Six in the 70s.
The lecturers have difficulty trying to teach students who do not know the basics of geography. There is no longer passion in the teaching of geography. Most of the good geographers have either left or are at the end of their careers.
It is no use asking that lessons be learnt from natural disasters when the basics of Mother Nature's workings are not taught through geography to our young ones.
I hope the Education Ministry reinstates the importance of geography in schools so that every young Malaysian grows up knowing Planet Earth better. This in turn will help them live with nature better and understand and accept the effects of natural disasters like tsunamis.
And before I end this letter I would like to ask this - whatever has happened to the National Conservation Strategy that was supposed to have been formulated by all the local universities together with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)? Are we learning anything from this strategy or has it been forgotten and swept under the carpet?
