In the 1990s, the educational system in Sweden began to a trend toward liberalization and decentralization. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the concepts of geographical education in the new Swedish curriculum.
Social studies and science began to appear in non-compulsory schools in Sweden in the late 1960s. Physical geography and regional geography were driven out of the social studies. Human geography incorporated some important developments of the new geography into the social studies, but it was gradually buried in the social studies. The technical aspects of physical geography were enchanted in science.
Until that time, geographical education in the compulsory schools was conducted within a general subject called “orientation”. The orientation subject was divided into a social block consisting of geography, history, religion, and civics, and a natural block consisting of biology, physics, chemistry, and technology. Geography was composed of physical, human, and regional geography, and functioned as one of the core of the orientation subject, which had as its goals the broadening of students' knowledge of humanity, society and the natural world, and the creation of a better society by nurturing independence and sociality. As students progressed from one grade to the next, their studies evolved from general courses into block courses, then finally into courses for individual subjects. Within this framework, the study of geography was a kind of bridge or unifier between natural block on the one hand and the social block on the other.
With the revision of the non-compulsory school curriculum in 1992, geography revived into a subject in its own right. With the compulsory school revision in 1994, the orientation subject was dismantled and geography was made an independent subject. As a result, at all levels of school education, geography has now been restored to its original system as a bridge between natural block on the one hand and the social block on the other.
Today we are witnessing the globalization of society at a rapid pace, and serious environmental problems are occurring on a worldwide scale. Therefore, educational systems should adopt to the resulting changes in understanding of this diversifying society and promote the well-rounded development of a sense of regional identity and international solidarity. Special emphasis has been placed on geography's role in environmental education. To understand global environmental problems, it is important to take a holistic view of humanity and the natural world. In this sense, geography is gaining attention for its aforementioned roles as a bridge between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.
The new geographical education has the added role in environmental education of looking holistically at the relationship between humanity and nature to instill in the students a comprehensive environmental image. One of the most important roles of geograhy is to nurture the important attitudes and capacity to understand, from an ecologial perspective, the various local, regional, and global issues and problems that exist between humanity and nature, and to foster a citizenry which can participate in the decisions whitch have an affect on the use and protection of the environment.

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