ABSTRACT

There has been continous debate among geographers in recent years about the relative importance of the human and physical sides of geography and the appropriate balance between them. Indeed the term 'New Geography' is not currently used in higher education circles since it is no longer 'new', and has been superseded by other approaches. A number of responses occurred between the 1970s and the present to displace quantitative geography. Radical geography and, subsequently, Marxist geography have been influential in the US and, particularly, in Great Britain. In this country it has had an impact in developing a more significant concern with problems of a social, economic and political nature. An additional obstacle to be confronted in any attempt to assess how much European geography is taught is the relative freedom British teachers have to construct their own courses albeit within the conventions and traditions of the subject and according to the resources and constraints existing in individual schools.