Students must Learn the process of decision making through subjects such as social studies and geography. But social studies and geography in Japan have not contained the process of decision making. Decision making requires students to have ability for solving of issues. Then this paper aims to provide the desired learning structure of geography with decision making.
Geography is supported by two main poles which are knowledge and skills (geographical view point and thinking-chiriteki mikata/kangaekata in Japanese). Knowledge of geography means that landscape is formed in mind of student. Landscape indicates the value for place in mind of individual. On the other side, skills mean the process of geographical thinking, the methods. Geographical information systems (GIS) is also the process of geographical thinking and a useful tool of learning for geography with decision making. In many cases, students illustrate only their outcomes of learning by GIS. GIS makes results easily. Then students can make estimates of places in future by GIS in which data is replaced by another data. This process is significant as the learning of decision making.
Knowledge and skills are connected by interests of student, and interdependent each other. The learning of surrounding area of school or home area is important as connecting between knowledge and skills. Interests are occurred in students by the surrounding area learning of school such as geographical investigation and so. The learning of home area should be examined as new merits.
Students learn world and Japan geography based on knowledge and skills connected by interests. Students take knowledge of world and Japan geography with suitable methods. In addition, they must judge reasonably and make decision making to improve regions and introduce to better future, using their geographic knowledge. Therefore this process is an approach to decision making. This learning structure is indicated in Fig. 1. Geography should be developing with decision making including values for region where is implicated in nature, society and subjectively of residents concerning environment. Furthermore, students must be educated for playing activity in society and enhancing their own personal life, by learning geography.

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The course of study on social studies in 1998 put emphasis on the methodology of study and basic & fundamental principles of social sciences. But only the methodology have the attention of everyone. We should put more emphasis on the basic and fundamental principles now. Because the basic and fundamental principles of sciences are the core of education. So we analyze the basic and fundamental principles of social sciences and geography.
1. The Basic and Fundamental Principles of Social Sciences and Geography
It is necessary for the basic and fundamental principles of social sciences and geography to have following structure.
‹the structure of social studies for school subjects›
contents of subject
generalizations and concepts for sosial phenomena (A) skills of social sciences (B)
‹the structure of geography for school subjects›
contents of subject generalizations and concepts for regional phenomena (X) necessary geographical phenomena for having images of our world (Y) skills of geography (Z)
In constructing the curriculum of social studies, we should apportion time of 80 per cent to (A) and 20 per cent to (B). In case of the geography, we should apportion time of 40 per cent to (X), 40 per cent to (Y) and 20 per cent to (Z). It is quite wrong to apportion time of over 20 per cent to (B) or (Z). (A) is the core of social studies. (X) and (Y) are the core of geography for school subject.
2 comparison our course of study on geography in 1998 with national curriculum geography in England in 1990
Students in Japan are asked for to study following contents of world geography in elementary and secondary school by the course of study on geography in 1998.
‹the content of world geography for a school subject in Japan›
substance
understanding of a selected country and its community (elementary school)
understanding of the geography of the 2 or 3 selected countries (secondary school)
skill
the skills of inquiring about a selected country (elementary school) the skill of inquiring of the regional character about 2 or 3 countries
Students in England are asked for to study following contents of world geography in elementary and secondary school by the national curriculum geography in England in 1990.
‹the content of world geography for a school subject in England›
substance
understanding of the world as a whole
understanding of selected places and different types of countries within the programs of study
major concept: population, settlement, communications and movement, economic activities, weather and climate, landform, resources, etc.
skill
comparison, interpreting geographical patterns, analyzing and interpreting geographical data, history and future
In view of the result of analyzing, our course of study on geography is insufficient to make our students study the basic and fundamental principles of geography and images of our world.

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issues of basic geographical-names which pupil or students have to learn on geographical learning. The results are as follows:
(1) Pupil or students usually have to use geographical-names on mental maps when they learn social studies especially regional studies of the national country or the world and they use atlas. On the other hand, people usually have to use geographical-names on daily life, for instance, reading time-tables, watching TV program of weather forecast, traveling or driving long way, so on. These are reasons why pupil or students have to learn basic geographical-names on geographical learning.
(2) Basic geographical-names have to be possessed of a few conditions. First, their names are usually used on geographical learning and daily life. Second their names are distributed in all over the national country or the world. The auther thinks some of their names may be sellected from school textbooks of social studies, national language, music, so on.
(3) The auther suggests 78 national country geographical-names which are mainly Japanese prefecture names and 27 world geographical-names mainly large city names as basic geographical-names.

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This paper is intended as an investigation of the two major educational issues necessary for school education to face up to in relation to what geography education in Japan should be like in the coming 21st century; one is international understanding (cross-cultural understanding) towards the internalization of Japan and the other sociogeographical awareness of environmental pollution. The reason for taking up these two issues is not only that they are closely related to each other in terms of the basic academic trait and methodology of geography education, but also that the aims of geography education should be to clarify these two issues.
As for international understanding, the aims and contents of geography education have changed according to the socially transitive concept of cross-cultural understanding since the 2nd World War. The point to stress here is that geography education towards the 21th century should approach this issue from the following standpoints; (1)to do multi-dimensional inquiry into cultural phenomena (2) to view our culture from different countries' perspectives (3) to view cultures from microscopic as well as macroscopic standpoints (4) to understand what factors cause regional peculiarities and similarities between cultures (5) to have sympathetic and active awareness of different cultures.
In regard to environmental awareness, it should be emphasized that the socially changing attitudes towards environmental problems have encoraged geography education to deal with this issue from the next 5 perspectives; (1) to clarify the significance of active human awareness of geographical phenomena (2) to consider the environmental conditions of nature (3) to take up the opposing problems of development and preservation (4) to have not only scientific but also humanistic awareness of nature (5) to take up the problems of natural disasters.

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The Japanese Ministry of Education has announced the Prescribed Courses of Study for High School Geography in March 1999. It has emphasized the more study of geographical skills and regional geography than the present courses of study implemented in 1989.
The purpose of this paper is to make clear why the geographical skills and the study of regional geography has become one of the central core of Japanese high school geography for the 21st century.
The conclusions of this study are as follows; (1) In Japan, the prescribed courses of study is used to be edited by the National commission on School Curriculum under the Ministry of Education, of which the basic skeleton is brought by the reports of the National Commission on Education. The 1996 report of the National Commission on Education proposed “zest for living” and the harmonious nationalism for the future citizens of Japan. (2) The revised courses of study 1999, has been written along with the basic philosophy of the “zest for living”. (3) To enhance “zest for living”. the prescribed courses of study for geography requested teachers to have lessons to enhance the geographical skills and the study of regional geography. (4) the development of geographical skills is very important to analyze the geographical issues and regional characters. And (5) The study of regional geography is the key for understanding the other worlds to find the new ideas for making our better life as well as building nationalism since tradition of geography education in Japan.

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Now, in Japan, national educational reforms have been moving forward toward the implementation of the comprehensive five-day school week system, and in response to the social changes and in order to meet the needs of the variety of students' learning will. In senior high schools, the standard weekly credit hours for a full-time student will be reduced to 30 credit hours from the current 32 credit hours in the school year 2003. The total number of credits required to complete senior high school education will be reduced to 74 credits from the current 80 credits. In addition, a new required subject area ‘Information Study’ (2 credits) and ‘Period for Integrated Study’ (105-210hours) will be established.
In Tokyo Metropolitan, the number of students has been decreasing since 1986, the second peak post WW II. The Tokyo Board of Education is planning to reduce the number of full-time senior high schools to 178 from the current 211 high schools and the number of part-time senior high schools to 96 from the current 103 high schools by the year 2011.
In March 1999, the New National Geographical course of Study for senior high school was proclaimed. In it, great emphasis is put on developing students' ‘geographical point of view/way of thinking’ and ‘geographical skills’, for students are expected to learn geographic competency and put it to practical use in their own society in order to live independently.
This paper deals with various issues concerning geography study as an elective subject under these present conditions of Japan and Tokyo. For example, the issues are as follows; the decreasing and aging of geography teachers, how to motivate students' voluntary will to study geography, how to put geography study to practical use in students' present and future lives, and so on.
Based on many practices of the members of Tokyo geography educational study group (Tokyo chiri-kyoiku kenkyukai), I expect that there will be continuous improvements and definite perspectives in new geographical education in high school starting in the year 2004.

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There are five theories in geography teaching in Japan (Yamaguchi 1998). Two thories, geography teaching as social studies education and geography teaching as geography education, are important in them. I think the former is the best geography teaching. The most important problem of geography teaching as social studies education is clarifying the relation between the citizenship and geographical cognition. In this paper, the author have clarified this important problem by discussing the relation between the geographical major concept, geographical way of thinking and geographical attitude which is the citizenship of geography teaching. The result of this study is as a following table.

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The Main purpose of learning geography is to make a model for the world that is structured in the brain of the students. It is important in teaching geography to be able to revise one's own image of the world so that one can have an interest in the objective real world and so that they can examine the train of it. And this model is made by the concept from various regions. The author shows the teaching model plan of the urban location as an example to show these concepts.
The subject materials of sample location are follows: ITSUKAICHI is a sample of the village of the way in the valley, also an arrangement of cities distributed around the dry weather region, and the falls line cities of the East Coast in the United States. ITSUKAICHI located the border of livable land between YAMAKATA (mountain side that means the mountain village community) and SATOKATA (level ground village side that means the agricultural village) in the plain, and this area has reciprocally supplemental interchange of both living land through a market. This study continues to inquire about common factors of the rest of urban locations through changes from results learned. And students get the concepts of the region that the cities located on the boundary of various livable land over the features of each urban locations. Then students will be able to enrich these concepts to study unknown urban locations. It is important to learn location by geography's own methods that are location, distribution, scale, interchange and alteraion.

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In this paper, the author tried to redefine the nature of geographic education in the background of its critical situation, and insisted on the necessity of adopting the conception of development education into geographic study to cope with the globalization which means to recognize multiculturism, interdependence and international cooperation to construct better global society.
By the way, the aim of development education is to bring up global-citizen by understanding the north-south issue structurally and searching the best way to solve it. And the feature of it is to adopt learning activity for paticipation in the society to promote student's interest in the matter for learning and to promote active teaching.
Standing on these points, the author tried to teach geography B which is titled “the north-south issue: a case study of Asian District” by adopting the conception of development education. As a result, it makes clear that adopting the conception of development education is very effective for bringing up global-citizen.
Finally, as a view in teaching geography for the future, the author thinks that it is more important to promote student's action to solve the north-south issue at the base of their consciousness as a global-citizen, and, to adopt the diversity of culture and people's life style in Asian Districts, and the problem, which a surplus development in advanced countries brought about, to enrich their recognition for developing countries.

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Originally geography is a field study, and fieldwork is the thing of primary importance for geographical education. Therefore implementation of fieldwork in geography class is strongly requested by a Course of Study for elementary, junior high and high school.
However fieldwork is not actively implemented during each school education. Although fieldwork is implemented for third and forth year students in elementary school's social study, most of them fail to arouse student's geographical interest due to lack of teacher's ability.
In junior high and high school, fieldwork is rarely implemented. The similar situation is also found at the faculty of education, which cause the fact that there are few new graduates who are able to undertake the implementation of fieldwork.
The present writer has continued fieldwork at the social/geography class in elementary, junior high and high school. The writer has also implemented fieldwork for all the student in a faculty of education of training elementary school teacher and the students who has a teacher's license of social studies in a faculty of education of training junior high school teacher at teachers college or university. All students participated in fieldwork highly appreciated it. Effectiveness of fieldwork for geographical education is fully proved from this point.
It could be suggested from the writer's activities that following two points are important for the encouragement of fieldwork at the actively engaged geographical education. The first point is a training of teachers who are able to implement geographical fieldwork. The second point is an enforcement of practically effective measures of educational administration for which facilitate an implementation of fieldwork at the class.

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The contents of this paper consist of the seven subjects indicated below. With the exception of (6), this paper provides a summary of views pertaining to various aspects of geography education from the standpoint of education in the classroom.
(1) Detrimental effects were indicated with respect to the contents of textbooks being regulated by school curriculum guidelines, and all textbooks tending to be excessively uniform. This may be considered to be analogous to the current issue of relaxation of regulations.
(2) Starting around 1965, the number of regional geographical teaching materials within the contents of elementary school social studies has diminished, and a trend of a lack of spatial understanding was pointed out from a comparison with the enhancement of period history in history teaching materials. It was stated that this dissociation of both fields should be corrected from the standpoint of healthy social studies development.
(3) Differences in the manner in which education administration and geographical societies are reflected in geography education were compared between the US and Japan through a comparison of those factors. In other words, in Japan, the intentions of geographical societies are not reflected in education administration, and it was pointed out that classroom education presently is overly dependent on the Ministry of Education resulting in uniform and passive education.
(4) Personal opinions were stated regarding the importance of the handling of place names that constitute essential basic knowledge in geography education.
(5) A present situation that has wandered off course while looking back over the progress of the past fifty years since the end of World War II is depicted with respect to the two forms of training, an endless topic in the field of education.
(6) The paper of Prof. Osamu Nishikawa is discussed, and an introduction is provided to the practicality of geography in both present and future society.
(7) With respect to differences between the sexes in learning geography, the question was raised based on personal experiences of the author that, in addition to differences in physiological phenomena of the cerebrum between males and females, significant differences between interests and concerns among females may be one of the causes of an inaptitude for learning geography.

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As for the state of the Geogrphy education to make win self education ability, it is considered based on the practice of the School Excursion at the Koganei Junior High School Attached to Tokyo Gakugei University Faculty of Education.
At the Koganei Junior High School, in the area visited by the School Excursion, the students make the outdoors observation and the outdoors investigation.
The purpose is to make the students learn the point of view and way of thinking and a way of geographical learning with the learning by the direct experience out of the school.
The self learning ability of the student rose through the preliminary learning of a School Excursion, the learning the expost fact learning in the spot.
Also, the social recognition of the student rises at making experience learning in School Excursion relate to the geography education in the classroom.
Especially the agricultural investigation is the way of learning to be excellent to extend the geographical way of thinking and the point of view of the student.

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