An interesting article in the Geographical Magazine.
It suggests that walking and exploring your local area is at the heart of all geographical study.
We do a fair bit of walking at King's, but perhaps need to do a little more of it…
Where was the last place you walked to?
Geography is a vigorous discipline, with no real need to justify itself.
Modern human geography is a powerful analytical tool. Physical geography, with its abandonment of Penckian and Davisian concepts has become perhaps more descriptive of phenomena. Geography is also a synthesising discipline and in synthesis unites both aspects of the subject. A study of landscape reveals the fundamental geology, the pedology, the biology (including lichenology), microclimatology, history, and sociology. This can all be achieved by a study of the local area on foot.
It is therefore advocated that all geographical teaching should begin with a study of the immediate vicinity on foot. As in Pestalozzian theory this should commence in the junior school and continue in later education. By so doing the two halves of the subject are reunited. For the individual the learning process is enhanced, and they are given the opportunity to establish a link with the genius loci, to have roots and to belong.
