ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to put contemporary geographical education in England and Wales into a broad context. It briefly considers the changing relationship between school and academic geography and also examines what might be our rationale for including geography in the school curriculum in the first place. The function of geography in school is to train future citizens to imagine accurately the conditions of the great world stage and so to help them to think sanely about political and social problems in the world around. The statement expresses a goal, perhaps the overriding goal for geography in education; it helps remind people why they are teaching geography and not something else. Decisions about what to teach and how to teach are, or should be, left to teachers who draw from a range of professional knowledge, including knowledge of geography. All knowledge is socially constructed, but powerful knowledge has particular qualities that arise from the academic communities that produce it.
