Why Study Geography?

Why Study Geography?

By Rachel Bubb, November 21, 2023

Perhaps you’ve asked yourself this question or maybe someone has asked you it before: Why do we learn geography? We learn it not to show off how much we know. It’s not about ourselves and being proud. Rather, it’s to be humble and acknowledge that the more we learn about the places and people around the world, the more there is to learn. It’s also to realize that people are similar everywhere but yet very different. 

One of my favorite reasons to learn geography is to encourage others. Now, this might seem a bit of a strange answer. Let me explain a bit. I’ve lived overseas in Asia for a number of years and have been a part of a small expat church with people from all over the world. Earlier, I knew hardly anything about Africa and so I asked someone from church to come over and tell my family about where he grew up: the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo). I started to ask a few other people if they could introduce their home countries to my family. Sometimes after church I’d pull out the globe and tell the kids, “This is where (so and so) is from.” 

However, something that happened is I started learning about African geography myself. There are quite a few Africans that go to our expat church. After some research and getting familiar with places and countries in Africa, I felt familiar with it. Soon, if someone said they were from (so and so) country, I could say something like, “That’s right next to ___” or “The so and so river runs through it, right?” Many times the person was encouraged because someone had taken the time to learn about where they are from. They almost expect people to not know about Africa, because so few people take the time to be familiar with it.

Now, you might not ever meet someone from Africa or from other countries. In Charlotte Mason’s time, this might have been the case for many people. Africa, Australia, South America, and many other places were so far away and you could only get to them by boat. However, you don’t know what the future holds: you might very well end up moving overseas later in life or meet people from other countries later on. Perhaps you’ll see this country or place in the news. Furthermore, being familiar with this place already will help you understand more what’s going on currently in that place. Learning geography can help us understand stories better, especially the stories and books that take place in other countries. It can give us something to think about, to dream about, and to imagine. 

I hope this has given you some good ideas to think about when you ponder why we study geography. I hope it encourages and gives you that extra strength and energy to keep learning. I’d like to finish with a few quotes from Charlotte Mason herself: 

“The questions is not,- how much does the youth know? When he has finished his education- but how much does he care? And about how many order of things does he care?” 

Charlotte Mason

(School Education, page 170)

“If the child do not live in the times of his history lessons, be not at home in the climes his geography book describes, why, these lessons will fail of their purpose. But let lessons do their best, and the picture- gallery of the imagination is poorly hung if the child have not found his way into the realms of fancy.” 

Charlotte Mason 

(Home Education, page 153) 

“But let him be at home in any single region; let him see, with the mind’s eye, the people at their work and their play, the flowers and fruits in their seasons, the beasts, each in its habitat; and let him see all sympathetically, that is, let him follow the adventures of a traveller; and he knows more, is better furnished with ideas, than if he had learned all the names of all the maps.”

Charlotte Mason 

(Home Education, page 275)

“Rightly taught, every subject gives fuel to the imagination, and without imagination, no subject can be rightly followed. It is by the aid of imagination that a child comes to love people who do not belong to his own country, and as he learns the history of their great deeds and noble efforts, he is eager to learn something of the country in which they lived, of its shape and size, of its mountains, woods and rivers, of the causes that made the people what they are.” (Imagination as a Powerful Factor in a Well-balanced Mind by E. A. Parish, Vol 25, 1914, Pg 379-390)

Also, take a look at Charlotte Mason’s section about Geography in School Education, pages 177- 182 

“Imaginations as Cultivated in the Teaching of Geography and History” by M. P., Volume 6, 1895,1896, Pages 110-117 is a great article about making geography and history living.