From Globes to GIS: The Paradoxical Role of Tools in School Geography

Computing and GIS appear to have the potential for revolutionizing geographic learning, offering students access to the “real world” and powerful tools for thinking geographically. They also appear to have the potential to reestablish a significant role for geography in American education. The former may be correct; the latter is unlikely. To understand the impact of computing and GIS, we must set them into the context of prior tools and technologies for geographic learning. Tools have played a double and paradoxical role in the history of school geography. They have been necessary for teaching geography, and they have epitomized the failure of the subject. Using textbooks as a case study, this chapter shows how school geography has squandered the original social mandate to learn geography. Tools were instrumental in this demise of school geography. Geography went from being indispensable to marginal, from intellectually challenging to dull and boring. It is the lack of a compelling social mandate to learn geography that prevents the reestablishment of geography as a school subject in K-12 education in America.