THE NEW GEOGRAPHY

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of designating schools as a base for the Safe Community and find out ideals of Safe Community. Safe Community has received nationwide attention as a new type of neighborhood planning and management in recent years. This paper looks into the case of the district of Shimizu Elementary School in Atsugi City, Kanagawa Prefecture. This district is considered a model district in Atsugi City to promote Safe Community project led by World Health Organization (WHO). The Shimizu Elementary School itself has also been recognized as WHO International Safe School, which serves as a core base for the Safe Community activities. The on-thespot interviews regarding the activities of Safe Community and WHO International Safe School, and a questionnaire survey were conducted for this study to grasp the residents’ state of participation in and their views about these activities. 　The results of this study contribute to demonstrating the present condition of these activities in the case of district of Shimizu Elementary School. The effects identified here include designating schools as the bases for these activities enhance residents’ interest and share the information through the schools and their children. Though they hope to practice these activities, the proportion of participation differs by the actual programs of the activities. Also, they tend to recognize these activities as part of school activities. One of the challenges identified is how they can promote participation not only while children are at school, but also after they graduate. 　In order to continue the Safe Community activities, it is necessary to ease their burdens and to expand it beyond the forms of school activities. It is important to take sufficient time to establish the rooted activities for the effective ground of Safe Community.

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In 1996, the first Geography Olympiad (iGeo) for secondary school students was held at Hague in The Netherlands, and has been held every two years since. The first Asian-Pacific Convention was carried out at Hshinchu, Taiwan, and is also held every two years. The International Convention and the Asian-Pacific Convention alternate: one or the other is held every year. Japan participated in the first Asian-Pacific Convention in 2007 for the first time, and has participated in iGeo every year since. Most recently, iGeo was held at Cologne, Germany in 2012, and Japan gained one bronze medal. The International Convention will be held every year after 2013, and the place in 2013 will be Kyoto, Japan. In the convention, the only official language will be English. Therefore, although a little additional time is allowed in a writing test, it will a difficult for students from non-English-speaking countries. 　Japan won the gold medal in seventh International Convention held at Carthage in Tunisia in 2008. However, Japan’s medal acquisition rate was not high. The reason is in Japanese participants’ lack of ability to obtain good results on the writing test and fieldwork test as compared with Eastern European countries, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, which always have outstanding teams. This result discloses the weak point of the secondary geography education of Japan. Japanese students have weak analytical ability and consideration capability for using data or map, although they have knowledge and judgment capability based on memorization. Furthermore, the reference collection capability for mapping is poor, and the ability to make proposals that are useful for development of an area based on some maps is not high, and the expression capability which conveys own idea intelligibly is not fully trained, either. 　The secondary geography education of Japan must free itself from the present condition, which falls short of the benchmarks set by PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) or ESD (Education for Sustainable Development). Otherwise, Japan will be further separated from the global standard. Japan must not fluctuate between joy and sorrow about the existence of the medal acquisition in iGeo. We have to aim at development of geography education from a long-term viewpoint, and we should positively adopt the excellent aspect of overseas geography education.

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