ABSTRACT
A sequence of events has taken place in education over the last decade, culminating in the Education Reform Act (DES, 1988), that has increased pressure on the school curriculum. New subjects, topics and skills are all competing for a share of the crowded timetable with long-established disciplines such as geography. The Education Reform Act (1988), which introduced a ‘National Curriculum’ for all pupils, may well exacerbate the existing situation, causing some subjects to lose valuable curriculum time. Though geography is in some senses protected by its ‘foundation’ subject status in the national curriculum, geographers may, in some schools, feel the need to develop new ways of delivering the distinctive knowledge and skills that their subject has to offer. This chapter sets out to examine the option of teaching geography in a humanities framework.
