From the Geography Teaching Status in Quo to the Ideal Geography Teaching

Abstract

The sphere of geography education in Japan has an inclination to be being reduced. Among its several reasons, there can be included the fact that school geography has been built into the frame of social studies which itself has few academic background, and that geographers have neglected their positive endeavor to release from this entanglement. Therefore, in order to progress from geography teaching, simply for the purpose of teaching, up to the geography teaching endorsed with fully scientific and systematized forms and contents, geographer must take trouble, some attempts of which will be described in the following lines. We must define what the concrete geographical contents are, besides acknowledging that geography at school underlies human life (man's life), as is seen in U. S. A., at the same time we must clarify the basic geographical ideas seeked to be taught by any means, which we get scrutinized by the professionals. Moreover, in response to the school teacher's asking, the attitude ready for us to illustrate quasi-scientific materials is necessary when asked. Next, school teachers engaged in teaching geography are always obliged to make the teaching plan developed and enriched. The efforts are integral to enhance geography teaching by enlighting the people on the geography universally or deepening or broading the correlation between school and society. Each one whose occupation is relative to or neighboring to the geography teaching had better put the domain about his knowledge in order concentrating on the subject, while the teacher of geography should arrange his domain, the fruit of many people's introspection and will to elevation. They must be confirmed in their opinion by what the others assert from their mutual views. As for the teachers they must renew their efforts for the object in order not to be behind the new scholarship. Under the circumstance, the connection between scientific geography and school geography must be expected to be the main prop, in the atmosphere of which, geography must bring up or reinforce the geography teaching. Only when forms and contents aforesaid come to perfection, the school geography may step into the ideal geography teaching.