School geography is one of popular subjects in New Zealand. The purpose of this study is to explain the factors of the popular subject, geography. Geography is option subject on form 5, 6, 7 in high school.
More than 30% of all high students take geography willingly. The reasons why they expect it to be an interesting subject, and they like to learn the world such as nations, natural landscape, different cultures and so. Moreover, they enjoyed social studies or geography in the past, and it might be lead to a job in future. They understand geography is enjoyable subject. These facts are examined by means of questionnaires, the anther tried to then.
The purposes of School geography are to develop student's understanding on environment as the home of people. So, the central geographical concept is the understandings on environment in New Zealand. The environment is a integrated concept on natural and cultural phenomena interacting together at a place and time. Most of New Zealanders are fond of bush walking. Many walking courses are developed and kept in most of recreational areas. Bush walking is also the most popular activity of overseas visitors. The environment is much important for New Zealand not only because of their own enjoyment, but earning money from overseas. Then, New Zealanders are much interesting in the environment. The central geographical concept is keeping with New Zealanders' concern about the environment.
The national syllabus of geography published by New Zenland, prescribed as common topics as follows natural hazards, population studies, resources and their use (form 5), natural landscapes, urban settlement, inequalities in development (form 6), natural processes, cultural processes and geography in planing and decision making (form 7). More detail studies are planned by each school teachers. National common text books are not employed. Geographical study plans and their teaching materials are much different by every school. Geography teachers are supported by Geography Resource Centre, the department of geography in universities and government.
Geography in New Zealand contributes to make policies and plans of government. Students graduated from the department of geography take jobs not only in schools, but also in many enterprises and government in recent decades. Most of New Zealand people and government recognize geography as the useful and important subject in national education.

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The authors intend to develop the environmental education through satellite images, especially in using by LANDSAT images, as one of the best ways for visualized educational means. In recent years, many kinds of remote sensing systems are improved remarkably and are indispensable for understanding physical system of the earth. Especially, the LANDSAT images prepare the information for large area simultaneously and repeatedly.
The understanding of physical system means the understanding of earth's radiative equilibrium because solar energy is the only one energy that the earth receives within the solar systems, the earth-atmosphere system, or solar-earth system as more global physical system. The information obtained from images by TM (Thematic Mapper), on-board LANDSAT 4 and 5, are very valuable for understanding the system because each band of the TM are reflected solar energy (Bands 1 through 5 and 7) and long wave radiation (Band 6) from the earth-atmosphere system.
The purpose of the environmental education is to bring up environmental ethics according to the understanding of physical system. For this purpose, learning the urban heat island phenomena, the most serious problem for the disruption of the physical system as thermal pollution, is the one of the best ways to experience the disruption of the system. Therefore, to recognize the urban heat island phenomena visually, from the LANDSAT images is the very excellent way for understanding the thermal pollution of the system from personal experiences.

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