Rethinking Geography in Romanian Schools: Curricular Changes in Geography Learning in Post-Socialist Romania

AbstractOnce with the fall of the totalitarian regime from Romania, in 1989, this country has recorded many changes in the social and economic life. One of the most dynamic fields has been represented by the educational system that encountered many turns both in the structural and functional perspective. Of these ones, a particular topic currently finds many intense debates in Romania concerning the quality learning in schools. It is about the curriculum that allows many opportunities for a proper instruction in connection with the contemporary requirements of the communities regardless of the scale we refer on (local, regional or national). Considering the geography, more than a descriptive science as well as an important field in human training, this paper tries to analyze the dynamics of the geographical curriculum focusing on two separate sections: the first one is assuming by the imposed national curriculum and the second one is oriented to the school decision curriculum (as optional subjects). These curricular dimensions are open outcomes of the Romanian reform on educational system and reveal quantitative and qualitative changes in teaching and learning geography after two decades of post-socialism. In order to find some accurate results this paper is basing on a particular methodological flow. It is designing on quantitative and qualitative methods as well as on the personal experience of the author regarding the Romanian geographical curriculum. In this regard, the sat problems of this paper occur from the following questions: Which are the most important changes in the Romanian geographic curriculum after 1990? Is the geographic curriculum really adjusting to the European standards of education? Which is the real impact of the geographical curriculum on the Romanian communities? Is efficient this curriculum in quality learning of geography? The findings of this study show contradictory and conflicting aspects that invite for further open researches, debates and discussions. These last ones are able to provide some fair conclusions, in order to offer new possibilities of action to capitalize the strengths of the Romanian curricular reform and, of course, to cancel the negative features of it