What is the scope of school geography as a means of enhancing pupils’ education? To answer this question, we shall certainly have to consider what kinds of knowledge and understanding the study of geography can offer. Knowledge and understanding alone, however, do not necessarily constitute an education and we shall also need to discuss the range of skills which may be developed through the study of geography. Since geographical study will inevitably lead us into debate about the issues that arise from the way people use or misuse their environments and about the political nature of decision-making concerning the use of space, we shall also become involved in the important area of values education.

This concept of geography as concerned with value-laden environmental situations is a relatively modern one and the subject has not always been viewed in this way. Let me briefly trace some key elements of the changing scope of school geography. (More detail is provided by Marsden in Chapter 2. )

During the early part of the nineteenth century, the little geography taught was of the ‘capes and bays’ variety, consisting largely of the rote learning of names of places and features, such as the rivers of Britain, and the location of these places and features. By 1880, geography was becoming more established in the elementary schools, with a clear division between physical and human geography. In the last years of the nineteenth century, there was a trend towards commercial geography and a greater focus on the links between physical and human phenomena. This was influenced by increasing interest in school geography on the part of the Royal Geographical Society, by the founding of the Geographical Association in 1893 and by the teaching and influence of Geikie, Mill, Mackinder and Herbertson (Graves 1975).

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