ABSTRACT
This chapter is written in the belief that beginning geography teachers should have an opportunity to reflect upon the history of Geography as a school subject. As the quotation from Goodson (1992) at the head of this chapter suggests, too often the Geography curriculum is simply presented as a given. It is written down and that’s all there is to it. Lankshear et al.’s (1997) comment reminds us of why we should delve a little deeper into how the geography taught in schools came to be accepted as common sense. He suggests that there is nothing ‘natural’ about what goes on in school geography. Instead, what counts as geography reflects the interests of powerful social groups.
