A plea for the best of the past: suggestion for teaching about landforms

Abstract

The teaching of geomorphology can be viewed in two contexts, the general and the specific or disciplinary. The latter can be used, as can other disciplines, to inculcate sound habits of analysis, synthesis, and articulation. In the professional area, some skills such as map reading and map making, field sketching, and air-photograph interpretation are in danger of being lost through technological advances, which though invaluable, cannot completely replace the older manual and personal practices. For various educational and practical reasons I urge that these skills be revived or maintained and not abandoned in favour of attractive but undemanding technologies. Similarly I suggest that quantification ought to be put in perspective, with emphasis on orders of magnitude rather than the nth decimal place. In December 1998 and after 40 years servicein the University- of Adelaide, Rowl Twidale retired in the sense that he is off the payroll, but he has been granted an honorary position, an office, and use of facilities in the Department of Geology and Geophysics. He intends continuing his field research into, and writing about, granitic landforms, very old palaeosurfaces (especially the reconstruction of Pangaean terrains), problems of dating land surfaces, desert dunes and gibber, and other landforms and landscapes that stimulate his curiosity.