PRIMARY GEOGRAPHY MATTERS!

Simon Catling

1. INTRODUCTION

This paper develops the argument that geography should be part of the primary school curriculum.
Geography should be taught to children from their entry to statutory schooling, though it could begin
earlier. This does not mean that geography should be formally taught, but it does mean that
geographical learning should be planned within either a subject-based curriculum or a social studies or
an integrated curriculum. The first section focuses on children’s learning about the world, providing a
much simplified and generalised account of children’s geographical experience. The second section
begins to relate this experience to geographical learning through five elements in learning. This leads,
thirdly, to an outline of the core for a possible primary geography curriculum, based on the
opportunities and objectives of primary geography. Finally, the focus on geographical values in a
primary geography education is emphasised.

2. CHILDREN ENGAGING WITH THE WORLD

Consider the experience that children have of the world – around them, imaginatively, and beyond
their immediate and direct experience – in the formative years of their lives, from birth until about 10
to 12 years old.

2.1 The child’s familiar world

Children’s turning, crawling, toddling and walking in their home environment introduces them to
features, locations and movement. Initially experienced in the home, this widens into the local
environment, around home and into the community, involving such activities as shopping, visits to
family friends and trips to the play area. For very many children this is controlled and constrained by
parents and child minders, though for some young children there may be greater freedom to roam in
the urban or rural environment. Children observe and become aware of the features of their micro-
world, using their senses to explore, discover and begin to make sense of their environment. This
exploration and activity introduces them to the layout and uses of the environment. It provides for the
beginnings of spatial understanding of that environment. As children grow and mature, they widen the
extent of their encounters of the world. Some of this increased movement may arise from work -
helping out at home, in the community - or going to school. As features and sites become familiar and
children become more adventurous, they develop preferences for parts of their environment and make
greater use of their home range, as parental controls are both loosened and occasionally slipped. Use
of the area may be in dens or at local meeting points with friends, in going shopping or just wandering.
It might include, if available when older, taking a bicycle ride a little further afield. So children build
their own sense of their home locality (Moore, 1986; Matthews, 1992; Aitken, 1994; Appleton, 1994).
This experience is important in developing children’s knowledge and understanding of the variety of
features, events and places that there are, developing in them the skills of wayfinding, and helping
them make ever more sophisticated and personalised use of the environment.

2.2 The child’s imaginative world

Alongside this development, children begin to explore their world imaginatively. Through imitative,
creative or fantasy play younger children play out the actions and places they see and encounter,
through replicating and enhancing the rituals of journeys, imagining one space as another familiar and
favourite place and acting out in it the actions of adults, perhaps a shop or school. They re-create
spaces into miniature environments in which to enact fantasies, for example a day at the beach.
Imitative play draws on the reality children see around them. Fantasy play is built from some of this
reality but also from stories told and read to them and from television and other sources. Through
imaginative activities children are also engaged in making sense of the world about them, in part with
the familiar world with which they engage and, in part, with the wider world which they increasingly
encounter. Play in imaginative worlds provides for security, comfort and control.
2.3 The child’s extending world
Parallel to these varied and various opportunities, very many children also travel further afield, usually
with parents, but later with friends or school. Journeys to such further afield places may be by car or
bus, train or boat or plane. It will be with a reason, perhaps a shopping trip, visiting relatives, going
on a holiday or going away with a school or community group. Some of these journeys will become
fairly familiar, repeated very or quite often, with the routes and features along them becoming known
even to quite young children. Others will be seasonal or made only once, and they may be memorable
because they are exciting and rare and/or the place was different or exotic. Through these less
frequent visits, children encounter places and aspects of the wider world, expanding their horizons.
These experiences might include the scale, noise and throng of a major store or a city centre; the
attractions, bustle and thrill of a coastal holiday resort or leisure centre; or the apparent quiet and
orderliness of a suburban street or the countryside. Such experience enables children to widen their
awareness, to encounter contrasts and similarities with their local world and, with support, to begin to
put together a more extensive set of information about what goes on where. Yet there are limitations.
Enclosed in a car, coach or train with headphones and a game, or encased in a plane or ship with a
film, with little or no encouragement to observe, can leave children with little sense of the
environment they are passing and negligible appreciation of the links between places. The wider
world may be entered but little notice taken of it.

2.4 The child’s expanding world

Yet, in this day and age, from their earliest moments children increasingly encounter and are aware of
the wider world, and of the variety of activities and lives lived in it, through their vicarious
engagement with both the media and the lives of their family and friends. The distant world is
brought into the home. Film, photographs, family accounts, the radio and television, newspapers, web
sites and emails are all involved in mediating even young children’s encounters with other
environments and places, peoples and events. Images and perceptions - helpful and negative – are
constructed through this experience. For younger children two sources are important, their family and
television (Palmer, 1994, Cullingford, 2000). The journeys and experiences of immediate family and
other relatives provide a rich source of mediated knowledge for children, which has an impact because
of the immediacy given to the accounts, photographs, video film, gifts and other memorabilia by those
who recount the visits they have made. Through television – and in future through the communicative
power of film through the internet – children see places, lives and events on which they occasionally
dwell. Television is a rich medium, in stimuli, in information and in versions of and views about what
it shows, some of which is riveting enough to engage children’s interest and response and some of
which drip feeds an almost unconscious collection of bites of knowledge about the world 'out there'.
Children’s encounters with the commonplace of soap operas or the human drama of catastrophic
events leaves a variety of imprints. Dramatic events and humanitarian plights have an effect.
Children can recount the impact of floods and earthquakes and of refugee crises they have watched,
and they may have some general sense of where they are happening. Yet, children may not be
consciously aware of the urban environment in which are played out the plot lines in an Australian or
American soap opera. Visual media are powerful, as geographer educators well know, but children’s
encounters, engagement and involvement with their presentations can leave children with a piecemeal
sense of the world about them, without a spatial or environmental coherence though they learn much
that is informative about the world, its wonders and others concerns for it.

2.5 Socially constructed geographical experience

Actively part of all these elements is a fifth dynamic in children’s experience of the world. It is the
social construction of children’s experience of the local and distant world about them. From birth
adults and other young people are at the heart of children’s encounters with the environment and
places, often explicitly controlling, and at times covertly containing, children’s encounters and
experiences. Much of children’s direct experience of places and environments, of what might be
observed and noted, is directed through the decisions, views and values of adults. The information
parents and others give about places and events is constrained by their interests and preferences. The
language used to describe and comment, the controls put in place and the opportunities provided, or
not, have impacts on what children will learn from their encounters with and their mediated experience
of places and environmental matters. Children’s natural geographical experience and learning is not a
matter of simply observing the physical and social environment - wild, rural or urban – and what
occurs in it. It is inhibited by the social context in which it is encountered. Children’s geographical
experience and views are socially constructed.

3. TOWARDS A BASIS FOR PRIMARY GEOGRAPHY

The outline above focuses on children’s experience as a precursor for their geographical learning in
school. This section turns to the context for teaching geography. These points are set in the context of
five elements in learning: exploring, engraving, embedding, enabling and engaging. Given the
geographical focus here, places, the environment and ethics also pervade what is to be said.

3.1 Exploring geographically

Children have an intense desire to explore the world around them. It is initially through their episodic
engagement with their immediate world and gradually with the ever widening world that their
experience enables them to build an informed but partial awareness of their environment, giving their
understanding some but limited coherence. Children bring to school an excitement that must be
harnessed about their experiences and their growing knowledge and understanding of the world. This
capacity to observe and notice, to act out through play in order to begin to make sense of the world, to
work through perceptions, images and information provides children with a working understanding
and appreciation of the world about them. But they are bounded by the limits to their vicariously
encountered knowledge and by the partiality, inconsistencies and inaccuracies that this inevitably
brings. To support children's natural geographical engagement, it is essential that, in whatever form,
geographical studies in school begin from the earliest years, to enable children to develop an ever
better informed knowledge and understanding of the Earth and its social and natural environments.
This must begin and grow from children’s encounters. Exploring the world cannot be other than a
basis for the primary geography curriculum.

3.2 Engraving geographical learning

In making their explorations, children are engraving an awareness and appreciation of the world into
their personalities and sense of themselves. This is an important element of the development of self-
identity and in maintaining positive self-esteem Chowla, 1992). But such development cannot be
allowed to go unchallenged, since, though informal learning about the world, about people, places and
environmental matters may be incisive and informative, it can also be ill-informed, partial and indeed
at times dangerously inaccurate. For young children this is hardly their fault, but teachers have a
responsibility to enable children not only to be well informed about the world around them but also to
engage in critical reflection upon their understanding. Geography matters in the primary curriculum
for this reason. What is engraved in the person and on the mind through learning should be within the
bounds of an ethical and honest geography (Sack, 1997).

3.3 Embedding geographical perspectives and understanding

The responsibility of teaching lies, then, in embedding in children the awareness, skills, understanding
and values which involve them in critical reflection on their knowledge and perceptions of places and
social and natural environments. To do so, children need to be engaged in an enquiry approach to
geographical learning, involving the gathering of data around useful questions, hypotheses and issues
about places and the environment, which moves beyond the description of what is found to analysis,
explanation, evaluation and the posing of further questions. This is vital, if to do no more than help
children begin to realise that any enquiry could proceed further and that the decision to conclude is a
decision to stop, not an inevitable conclusion. This needs to involve challenging children to explain
the data and information they have described, to analyse the patterns they have found, to justify the
conclusions they have arrived at from evidence, to provide the arguments for different sides in a
controversy and to explain why their preference may be one approach rather than another. In essence,
enquiry should lead to an ingrained inquisitiveness and a healthy scepticism, which recognises the
inevitable limits of geographical awareness, understanding and speculation, as well as the
development of cautiously held personal perspectives. Essential to this process of embedding learning
with younger children is the need to use geographical concepts and vocabulary, such as land use, site
conditions, transport and sustainability in the context of the study of location, spatial patterns and
environmental processes. This is vital so that children may develop their understanding of why places
and environments are as they are and begin to appreciate what might happen next and consider
alternative 'what ifs' there are to the decisions that are made. Inevitably, children will be examining
attitudes and values, including their own, as part of this process.

3.4 Enabling the use of geographical skills

Fundamental to effective geographical learning is the development of geographical skills. A range of

skills is vital in enabling children to undertake enquiries about places and the environment fruitfully.
The core skills in literacy and numeracy, providing access to so much information and data about the
world within and beyond personal experience, are essential. Equally vital to enabling geographical
understanding to develop in younger children are the skills of reading and interpreting maps, of
making maps, of reading and taking photographs and of understanding and producing sketches. They
involve the use of a wide variety of maps, pictures, equipment and the real environment. Examining
the world outside at first hand places fieldwork as a key source and inspiration for geographical
learning for young children. Building both on children’s fascination in exploring the world and on
geography’s study of the world of here and now, sensing, observing, investigating and responding to
wildscapes, landscapes and urbanscapes, the features, the daily round of lives, the events and the
images of places and environments gives geography the reality on which it is based and thrives. For
younger children geographical ideas and concepts, attitudes and values will not begin to understood or
seen to be useful if not enabled to be appreciated through the skills and resources of geographical
study.

3.5 Engaging in geographical commitment

Primary geography is essential to enabling children to begin to act responsibly in their own lives and
with others in their local and global community. Throughout this, children will be engaging in their
own learning about the Earth and its environment and will be helped through the study of their
perceptions, knowledge, images, values and ideas about how they would like the world to be, to
develop their own ethical stance about their world. If we take the perceptive proverb as a principle
underpinning a geographical stance - "Our responsibility is to return the Earth to our children in a
better state than it was in loaned to us" - primary teachers have a duty to ensure that children are
brought up to take responsibility for handing the Earth onto their children in a better state than they
have had it returned by the current adult generation. This engagement requires both that primary
children are encouraged to develop their analytic perspectives and to clarify their personal values in
relation to those put to them. It requires also that these values are values of care and improvement.
Engagement requires action rather than examination, involvement beyond explanation (Hart, 1997).

4. GEOGRAPHY IN THE PRIMARY CURRICULUM

4.1 Objectives for a geography curriculum

Primary geography matters because it builds on children's experience and develops their knowledge,
understanding, skills and values in relation to the environment and places. In doing so, a primary
geographical education can and should provide many opportunities for children’s learning about the
world.

On this basis the objectives of the primary geography curriculum can be set out as follows. The
primary and elementary curriculum, geography should be planned to:
 help children to make sense of and put into context their own experience in their immediate and
other visited environments, that is, their experiential geography;
 introduce children to and extends their awareness, knowledge and understanding of the wider
world, expanding their horizons through introducing them to place and environments beyond their
experience, their extended geography;
 develop their locational knowledge and understanding, helping them develop a global mental
framework within which to set their geographical awareness;
 develop children’s spatial awareness and understanding, though the development of mapwork
skills, the study of photographs and sketches and studies of places and the wider world, their
geographical concepts and skills;
 develop their knowledge and understanding of what places and environments are like, why they
are like they are, how they are changing, what processes and patterns shape them, and how they
might continue to or be further changed and developed, their geographical knowledge and
explanation;
 foster children’s appreciation of the environment and of the Earth as their home, and help them to
understand why an environmentally and economically sustainable approach to the future of not
just our own places but of all other people’s places is important, their geographical appreciation;
 engage children in self-reflection and clarification in developing their own attitudes and values
towards places and the environment, which they can justify and for which they take responsibility,
their geographical values;
 encourage children to be thoughtful about making decisions which affect their lives and the lives
of others, including those who they will never meet or know, their geographical impact.

In short, primary geography matters because it is essential to children developing their knowledge and
understanding about and their values for places and the natural and social environment, through
living and studying in their community and environment and by studying other places and
environments across the Earth.

4.2 The focus for the curriculum

These intentions can lead to the planning of what might be focused on at different stages in children’s
primary schooling. The following outline of geographical content, knowledge, skills and values
indicates some of the key aspects that might be covered. Since many children participate in
educational environments before they begin statutory schooling, this programme begins at the pre-
school stage.

The geographical dimension of the curriculum should enable children to:

In the pre-school, nursery or kindergarten environment

 observe and find out about features in the nursery/school and local streets
 build up their vocabulary about the everyday world about them, of features, events, directions and
space
 talk about what they like and dislike about their environment and other places
 talk about the lives of other people in other places using photographs and descriptions
 play with environmental toys and listen to stories about people in places

In Years 1 & 2 in primary and elementary school

 describe features in their local and other environments and how they are used, as well as events
and activities that happen in these places
 use questions, fieldwork, maps and other resources, and extend their vocabulary, to investigate,
describe and comment on places near and far
 through stories and play explore features of and activities in places and environments
 identify similarities and differences between places and consider some reasons for these
 express views with reasons about places and environmental matters
 recognise that environments change and can be looked after, and consider what role people can
and do play in affecting and caring for environments

In Years 3 & 4 in primary and elementary school

 contribute to planning geographical enquiries and how they can be carried out, including through
fieldwork, and begin to evaluate how informative they have been
 examine the location of features and some of the patterns particular features create, in particular
using maps as an aid to investigation and in communicating their findings
 begin to use more geographically appropriate vocabulary to describe and express findings and
views about places and the environment
 consider how some changes they have identified in places and the environment are caused and
offer some views on whether the changes are helpful or not
 look at what different settlements are like, exploring more than one place in detail
 study how people are affected by and can have an impact on the environment
 consider how people can improve the environment and what ‘improve’ might mean for whom

In Years 5 & 6 in primary and elementary school

 plan, undertake and share geographical enquiries using a variety of resources, including fieldwork,
maps, photographs, numerical and literary sources
 analyse ways in which human and natural processes create and shape localities and aspects of the
environment, such as rivers or coasts, and affect locations and geographic patterns
 examine and be able to begin to explain the importance of the interdependence of places and
people
 use, appropriately, geographical terms and skills to describe, explain, communicate and evaluate
their investigations
 compare what places are like - their character - and how they are changing, and give some reasons
for their comparisons and the changes they note
 study how decisions affect places and environmental issues, and begin to recognise and appreciate
the reasons why different people hold different views on issues and that these have an impact on
decisions in various ways
 identify and justify ways in which they can be involved in sustaining environments, and be able to
give some account of what sustainability means

Such geographical studies should include work not only in the children’s local environment but also
which involves developing awareness of their own country, the wider continental context and a global
perspective. It will be selective, but it should draw on a variety of examples from different economic
and physical contexts. Children should have planned encounters with both particular places at
different scales and with a variety of types of environment. Such studies will need to be planned to
develop the use of geographical skills, in particular mapwork, reading photographs, using sketches,
gathering information from a variety of secondary sources, such as information books, newspapers,
video and CD-rom material, and, where practicable, drawing on relevant websites.

5. VALUES AND PRIMARY GEOGRAPHY

5.1 Geographical attitudes and values

What should already be clear is that primary geography is not simply a subject based around
information about places and the environment. Nor is it just about developing understanding of the
concepts and ideas that give geography its distinctive focus. Equally at the heart of the geographical
education of young children are the attitudes and values geography promotes as a subject in education
(Catling, 2000). They can be summarised as follows:
 the stimulation and fostering of children’s interest in their immediate and distant surroundings
 the engagement of children’s sense of awe and appreciation of the beauty and variety over the
surface of the Earth
 the development of children’s informed concern about people’s impact on the world
 the encouragement of a willingness to take responsibility for the sustainable care of the planet,
through local and wider action.
 the promotion of a commitment in children to a global perspective and international
understanding, including respect for people and an appreciation of cultural inter-relationships

5.2 Geographical citizenship

In promoting these values and attitudes geography is engaged not only in developing a sense of local
involvement but also in laying the foundations for lifelong engagement in contributing to the
development of the Earth, in being a part of the whole. Children need to be encouraged to think in
terms of places, environmentally and internationally, in effect to be global citizens. To be worthwhile,
the development of such citizenship understanding and values includes equipping children with the
values, skills and knowledge to deal with the difficult moral and social questions and issues that they
do and will face. While this can be seen as controversial, effective global citizenship requires primary
children to engage with controversy, not least because it is inherent in the world geography studies and
also because not to do so neither challenges children to consider their own evolving values and
principles nor develops their engagement with the world about them.

This would seem to mean that the primary geography curriculum must provide opportunities for
children to:
 realise they are members of a local and international community
 begin to recognise and understand different people’s needs and responsibilities
 become aware that responsibilities sometimes lead to conflict
 use imagination to start to understand other people’s experiences and perceptions about places and
people
 identify and respect differences and similarities between places and people and begin to realise
these arise from many factors, including environmental, cultural, ethnic, racial and religious
diversity, gender and disability
 consider social, environmental and moral dilemmas
 research, discuss and debate topical place and environmental issues, problems and events
 explore how the media present information and views about places and the environment
 become aware of the role and some of the activities of voluntary, community and pressure groups
in environmental matters
 share their own opinions and explain their views on environmental issues
 make choices and decisions, and give some reasons for them, in relation to place and
environmental matters
 consider ways to resolve differences of perspective and opinion about places and the environment
by looking for alternatives, making decisions and explaining choices
 recognise some factors that improve and harm the local and other natural, built and social
environments
 begin to recognise that resources can be allocated in different ways and that these choices affect
individuals, the community and the sustainability of the environment

Much of this can be engaged with through studies of places and the environment, but this is one
dimension in developing global citizenship. Another is active involvement, best undertaken in the
local community. Developing global citizenship in the primary geography curriculum is intended to
involve children in activities that enable them to examine the role values play in people’s behaviour in
the environment and to places and to develop their own environmental values. Such activities can and
should be included in the curriculum and built into a programme such as that outlined above, perhaps,
as follows:

In the pre-school, nursery or kindergarten environment

 domestic environmental care, eg keeping the nursery area tidy, caring for each other and the objects
they use

In Years 1 & 2 in primary and elementary school

 local environmental management, eg recycling, simple environmental audits, surveys of school
grounds to identify improvements

In Years 3 & 4 in primary and elementary school

 local environmental research, eg surveys and mapping leading to changing part of the school's
environment or a community area, finding out how the local media report on the local area

In Years 5 & 6 in primary and elementary school

 community environmental research and management, eg interviews with local residents and
professionals, together with personal evaluations, to identify, propose and support action upon a local
issue

6. CONCLUSION

Three arguments have been explored here. First, that children bring to school, on arrival and
throughout their primary schooling, growing experience and developing perspectives on the places and
environments they live in, visit, imagine and encounter from secondary sources. Second, that
geographical education in primary schooling is both premised on drawing on young children’s
background and about directing and taking forward their learning in the context of geographical ideas,
topics, methodologies, skills and values. Third, that there is no escaping the value focus of
geographical education for young children, and that primary geography’s role is, fundamentally, to
foster attitudes in younger children which question, even challenge, the information and views they are
investigating and to develop in primary school children a thoughtful perspective on their own values
for the environment of and places on the Earth.

Primary geographical education matters because it works with what is already developing in children,
their sense of place, their awareness of the world and their attitudes and values towards it. It matters
because to wait until later in the educational cycle leaves the opportunity too late; attitudes and values
are taken up by children early in life. It matters because children and their experience of the world
matters. It matters because geographical education is concerned with the world children live in now
and will live in the future: as educators we have a responsibility to foster children’s abilities and
capacities to work positively for the future of the planet. Primary geography matters because it
informs children about places and environments, it develops the skills and questions children need to
investigate the local and global environment, and it engages children not just in clarifying their own
stance but in being thoughtful and positive towards the environment, the people and the places of the
world. It matters because people are needed who care and who will act on their caring.

7. REFERENCES

Aitken, S.C. (1994) Putting Children in their Place, Washington: Association of American
Geographers
Appleton, J. (1994) How I Made the World: Shaping a View of Landscape, Hull: University of Hull
Press
Catling, S. (2000) What is the purpose of teaching geography in school? In Moon, B., Brown, S. &
Ben-Peretz, M. (Eds) Routledge International Companion to Education, London: Routledge
Chowla, L. (1992) Childhood Place Attachments. In Altman, I. & Low, S.M. (Eds) Place Attachment,
New York: Plenum Press
Cullingford, C. (2000) Prejudice, London: Kogan Page
Hart, R.A. (1997) Children’s Participation, London: Earthscan Publicationa
Matthews, M.H. (1992) Making Sense of Place, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf
Moore, R.C. (1986) Childhood’s Domain, London: Croom Helm
Palmer, J. (1994) Geography in the Early Years, London: Routledge
Sack, R.D. (1997) Homo Geographicus, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press