COURSE IN GLOCAL GEOGRAPHY

These are some of my ideas of how a geography course for high-school students should be conducted with ideal outcomes of global knowledge.

The purpose of a geography course is to provide students knowledge, understanding, and skills that enable them to live in, comprehend, and take an active part as informed citizens of the Planet at various scales from the local to the global. The geography course intends to afford students the requisite perspective to assess their place in the world spatially and culturally (their sense of place), both as resident of a local place and as world citizen (cosmopolitan citizenship). Through these two intertwined affects, the cognitive processes of full self-comprehension of where the student lives in time-space and her development of responsible local-global, or glocal, citizenship will be enhanced.

Ultimately, the geography course intends to enrich both students and society by developing overlapping and nested sets of awarenesses: of self (where and how the individual fits in the world), of local and global society (both influencing the individual), and of methods that the student can use to further understanding of the time and space in which we now live. Self-knowledge and social awareness are essential outcomes of a course in geography.