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So why study geography?
First- let’s test your geography knowledge with this quick video.
How did you do? I got 2/3. I had no idea about the diameter
of the Earth. It was way smaller than I was expecting! But hey, you learn something new every day!
My students always want to know- why is it important to
study geography? When are we going to
learn about wars and history and the interesting
stuff? Why are we studying geography in social studies? We learn about the
earth in science!
So why is it so important to have a strong foundation in
geography? We have Google Maps and Google Earth at our fingertips. We can find
locations easily enough. No one uses paper maps anymore; everyone uses a GPS or
their phone via internet, data, or downloaded maps. They’ve removed the
reference section from ITBS because the skills to use a printed thesaurus,
encyclopedia, or dictionary are becoming obsolete. Is geography the next thing
to go?
I remember sitting in one of my ESOC (social studies
education) classes and us debating the purpose of geography as a course in
middle and high school. Of course, we all thought it was needed, duh!
Unfortunately, not many others find the importance of social studies in general
to be equal to math or language arts let alone having an individual geography
class. Geography gets lumped in to other classes which fall under the social
studies umbrella. Then those classes get lumped together and voilà! Now you
have the all-encompassing social studies, or social sciences, class.
These days I teach all the aspects of social studies:
geography, culture, human geography, history, government, economics… I find my
lesson very geography heavy. Why do I try so hard to push this field on my
students? Am I going at my whole class wrong? I decided to, you guessed it,
research! Here’s what I found about why we should be teaching geography.
Basically, geography is MORE than, “What is the capital of
Turkey?” Geography breaks down into five basic themes: Location (where a place is), place
(what a location is like), human-environment
interaction (how humans impact the
environment and vice-versa), movement
(how people, ideas, and things get from one location to another), and regions (what places have in common).
Geography connects us to our world and to one another. It provides a connection
to the evolution of people’s cultures and ideas. Geography allows us to have
spatial reasoning between people and places. (So it seems my geography-heavy
curriculum is a strong approach to the content. Yay!)
The U.S.’s geographic knowledge is very low. I mean, we have
all seen the clips from Jay Leno. Check out this compilation video. I’d be so embarrassed if that were me and even more embarrassed if this included
one of my students. I would feel I had failed them.
I remember in high school reading the paper about the “War
on Terror.” The beginning of the article was a blank political map of the
Middle East and asked where Afghanistan was. Honestly, I had to look it up on a
map. (This was before I could ask Siri or Google like my students do these
days.) How sad is that? Our country was sending troops over, my own cousin lost
his life in the conflict, and I couldn’t even tell you where it was. Recently
with everything happening in Syria and the U.K. voting to leave or stay with
the E.U., I strongly believe that knowing where these countries are (location),
what they are like as far as human geography and climate (place), help students
not only understand better what is happening but have a stronger connection to
the people. That’s important in developing empathy and creating better global
citizens of the future generations.
Are you still not convinced? You still need a reason or two
to study geography? Here are 22.
- “Top 10 Reasons to Study Geography”
- “3 Reasons Why Learning Geography Is Important”
- “Why Is Geography Important”
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