The purpose of this research is to examine geography education in elementary and secondary schools by providing current perspectives on relevant issues. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical context in which issues relating to geography education in schools have arisen, and then to explore the scope and limit of the public-policy and educational-discipline debates in this regard.
The discipline of systematic geography is divided into physical geography and cultural geography. Physical geography involves geomorphology, climatology, bio[logical]geography, soils geography, hydrography, oceanography, and cartography. Each of the components of physical geography is allied with a specific scientific discipline, with the last-named component allied to mathematics and identified with mapmaking. Cultural geography involves "all phases of man's social life in relation to the physical earth," and either embraces or is a feature of study of resource use, political science, economics, military science, ethnography, and history ("Geography," Funk & Wagnalls). To discuss the historical context in which geography education assumes importance is to discuss crisis. Published reports routinely cite low levels of geographical literacy at all grade levels in the American educational system (Graubard 257-8; Gardner, "School" 2). Some reports focus on the fact that American students cannot locate countries or capitals of the world with any degree of accuracy, but others allude to the fact that American students cannot even identify the continental United States or the locations of specific states on a globe or map of the world (Bradley 27). Typical of the attitude of crisis are frequently cited media reports of gaps in geographical literacy such as the findings in a survey of broadcast affiliates of CBS that, for example, 39 per cent of high-school seniors in Boston could not name the six states of New England or that more than 40 p...