Geography amid COVID-19 — inequality, decent work, and curriculum

Abstract

Questions about what it means to have - in the language of Sustainable Development Goal 8 - 'decent work' have run throughout the debates and policy responses to COVID-19, with many commentaries in the UK highlighting the contradiction of those now celebrated as 'key workers' having been recently been labelled as 'unskilled labour' by the Home Office Drawing on comparisons across the examples of England and Wales, Rawling argues that high level curriculum planning could and should play a key role in reviewing and updating geographical education in the context of global issues including climate change and COVID-19, rather than, she argues, relying on teachers: 'countering geographical ignorance, at a time when this has never been more important to humanity, demands no less' (p 76) A global issue of the previous decade - the global financial crisis of 2007-9 - is the focus of Cecile Coundrin's fascinating analysis within the middlesized Greek city of Larissa, set amid disruptions in global flows of capital and the spatial dimensions of financial vulnerabilities