The enforcement of the new curriculum guideline by the Ministry of Education which allows a senior high school pupil to choose their social studies subjects has caused a great concern among school geographers in Japan since geography is one of the subjects which have been steadily losing their attractiveness to pupils. School geography of some other countries had suffered from the same problem, and was able to recover pupils' interest in geography only after a thorough reform of conventional geography teaching. This paper deals with the West-German experience of this sort, expecting to contribute to reorganize our school geography to suit the contemporary social demands.
In West Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) the principal concepts of school geography with Heimatkunde and concentric regional geography were retained even after World War II up to the end of 1960's, with a few proposed alterations within the old framework.
The initial impulses of the reform then came from several sectors, pedagogics, radical geography students and field of geography itself. The idea from pedagogics which provided the basic concept of this reform was that of Saul B. Robinsohn, asserting that educational reform must not be confined to something like introducing sophisticated audiovisual equipments but the currirulum itself must be revised from the point that pupils have a readiness and quality to build jointly with a critical spirit a future democratic society. At the German Geographers' Conference in 1969 radical geography students severely criticized the old regional geography method both at schools and universities, saying that superficial description, lack of problem orieatation and meaningless memorization had averted the pupils' interest from geography and that many students shared the opinion that geography didn't need to be taught in Gymnasiums. From the field of geography came two new directions, one from the Munich school of geographers, which introduced a new system of Sozialgeographie with the concept of Grunddaseinsfunktion (basic function of human existence) being one of its cores, and the other from the trend to revalue the German-originated theories of economic geography after the quantitative revolution in the English-speaking countries.
After various discussions and efforts these three points were put together to formulate an entirely new concept of geography teaching. Its directive aim follows the Robinsohn's concept, accompanied by the overall and detailed aims of the subject and plans for each lessons. The curricula are no longer organized in order of regions, but of the study aims (Lernzielorientierung), which pupils are expected to acquire. The main point in the overall study aims of geography is to provide pupils with a readiness and quality to participate in the environment building process, from the neighbouring areas of pupils, like a urban planning, to those of a world-wide scope, like development of developing countries. The concepts of Sozialgeographie and theories of economic geography are two of main components of this new geography teaching. Its Grunddaseinsfunktion, namely, to live in a community, to work, to reside, to be supplied with, to educate themselves and to recreate, is considered to be suitable for explanation of various situations in which people or social groups are involved. On theories of central-place systems or industrial locations new lights from welfare point of view are cast, so that pupils master how these centres or industries locate themselves and how pupils furnish themselves with better supply and employment opportunities.
To facilitate the learning and to equip pupils with the attitude of self-determination, the planning games (Planspiel) and the project-oriented lessons are adopted.

View full abstract

The Yamasaki fault system, a major active fault zone in Kinki district, extends about 80 km from WNW to ESE along the southern foot of eastern Chugoku Mountains, and has left lateral displacements with a relative uplift of the NE block.
The displacements by these fault activities are clearly expressed on the surface topographies. Especially, most valleys which flow crossing the surface trace of the fault show typical sinistral dislocations (offset streams). In addition, this fault system is famous for its high seismicity. Recently, many geophysical and geochemical studies on the Yamasaki fault system are carried out. But fundamental topographic or geologic investigations are scarce. Therefore, the writer mainly describes and analyzes the fault topography along this fault system in this paper.
The findings of this study can be summarized as follows.
1. Faults distributed in the study area compose the active fault system (namely, the Yamasaki fault system), which consists of four relatively large faults (viz. Sayo, Hijima, Yasutomi and Goji faults) and some small faults (viz. Toyonari, Kuwano, Kami-Mikawa, Naka-Mikawa, Kawato and Ohkurayama faults).
2. It is considered that the Sayo, Hijima and Yasutomi faults are the main traces of this fault system judging from the surface expressions of these fault displacements. On the other hand, it seems that the Goji and Kuwano faults are inactive. Others are subsidiary faults located at the terminals of each large fault.
3. The relation D =a L (where D is an amount of stream offset, L is a length of the river upstream from the fault and a is certain coefficient) is acceptable only for streams along the Sayo fault segment, where coefficient a is about 0. 3.
4. Surface topographies observed along the Yamasaki fault system reveal that active strike-slip faulting has played an important role on the topographic evolution of the surrounding mountains.
5. Relatively large rivers crossing the fault in this area have little offset. The reason of this phenomenon is ascribable to its modes of fault dislocations and river erosion. It would be seen that the offsets of stream originated by faulting were obscured by the lateral erosion of these rivers.

View full abstract