Lists are dangerous.
They’re often the solution to the wrong problem.
Lists can make distinctions and designations in a very real way that can lack context and cause as many issues and as much harm as we’re looking to address.
Still, I’ve made a list.
It’s a list of substantive knowledge, to which our first question might be “what’s substantive knowledge?”. For those wanting a more in depth look at what I’m talking about, when I’m talking about knowledge there’s an earlier blogpost here that you might like to read. For those wanting a quick overview, it’s the ‘knowing’; the ideas and concepts that we would want students to know about the world around them through their study of Geography.
So, why make a list? Firstly, personal curiosity. It might not be the grandest of reasons, but aren’t you a little bit curious as to what a list of all the things we’d want someone to learn in Geography might contain? Well, the only way to get there is to have a go at codifying it. Like mine did for me, yours might surprise you. It’s absolutely a reproduction of all of my biases, so please don’t conflate this list with a position of objectivity, it represents the substantive knowledge of Geography from my positionality.
So, why make a list? Because, used sensibly, it has some utility. This is a starting point for a conversation, not an end point. Conservations about what and how we teach don’t have a destination; only a journey. I’m not suggesting that anyone teach everything listed, I’m suggesting you think about how much of what’s listed here the students studying Geography with you will know by the time they stop studying Geography with you. Is it a lot, is very little, how different are our interpretations of Geography’s substantive knowledge?
The goal is conscious intentionality. We have limited time to teach everything we’d want. The totality of knowledge produced within the discipline of Geography is growing all the time. We have to make hard choices about what we teach and what we don’t. The more conscious about the choices we make, the more intentional we aspire to be in those choices, the more confident we can be in our curriculum.
This is not a tick-list. This. Is. Not. A. Ticklist. Please, use it sensibly; this is not a tick-list.
So, where is it? You can either download it here, or scroll down and give it a read.
Agriculture & Land Use: Human interactions with landscapes, categorisations of food production, ideas of surplus, deficit, abundance and scarcity, how this links to climate and the climate crisis, capitalist land organisation and distribution
Aid: Development, humanitarian, debt, repayments, multilateral and unilateral approaches, the role of the World Bank and IMF
Anthropocene: Distinguishing our current geological epoch as the result of human actions
Arid & Semi-Arid Geomorphology: Distinct landforms resulting from the processes of arid and semi-arid environments
Biodiversity: Range, breadth, details, specificity of flora and fauna, role of latitude, climate, human actions and forecast changes from the climate crisis
Biomes & Ecosystems: Adaptations of flora and fauna, evolution, interactions, aesthetics, beauty,
Borders, Nation States & Citizenship: Ideas of status, legality, rights, belonging, acceptance, tolerance, governance, administration, boundaries, access, equality, equity
Capitalism & Neoliberalism: Debt Issuing, Marketisation, Private Ownership, Market Planning, Profit Motive, limited government, wealth accumulation, anti-socialism
Circular Economy: Sharing, leasing, reducing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling
Climate Crisis: IPCC forecasts, modelling, impacts, mitigation, adaptation, current events
Coastal Geomorphology: Distinct landforms resulting from the interactions of processes of seas and oceans with the land at shorelines
Conflict: Why, when how and how it occurs, and how it has been resolved or continues
Conservation & Environmentalism: Individual, community, and national acts, behaviours, and approaches towards stewardship, managing, renewing, rewinding, protecting and preserving the environment, national parks, national monuments, coral reefs
Culture & Identity: Ideas, customs, social norms, art, music, beliefs, values, manifestations, way of life, it’s fluidity and impermanence, ideas of tolerance, acceptance and celebration
Democracy, Agency, & Activism: How decisions are made, who is included, who gets to, who doesn’t, how it’s challenged, where democracy is and isn’t used or subverted, where agency lies
Demography: Population structures, changes, and projections, processes of census and data collection, Malthusianism and growth skepticism, Boserupianism and cornucopian futurism.
Development: How it’s been defined, by whom, and why, critiquing eurocentrism of thinking, questions of dependency and dichotomy
Disasters: Human action, agency, planning, decision making, risk, disaster by choice
Distribution & Inequality: Sharing, hoarding, accumulation, inheritance, infrastructure, efficiency, mechanisms and systems
Earth Systems: Feedback loops, thresholds, gradients, water and carbon cycles, interactions and integration
Economic Categorisation & Measurements: GDP, economic development measures, sectors, growth, and development, accuracies and inaccuracies, western-centrism of categorisers, debunking the Brandt Line
Energy Production: Fossil fuels and their formation, geopolitics and their distribution, renewables, nimbyism, consumption, energy mix, forecasts, demand, links to the climate crisis
Equality & Equity: Individual and group status, rights, opportunity, questions of legal impartiality and justice,
Exploitation: Historic and modern slavery, income disparity, wealth gaps, employment and working conditions, rights, status, colourism, prejudice, links to colonialism and neocolonialism, power dynamics, capitalism, racial capitalism, unionism
Fairness and Discrimination: Beliefs, values, stereotypes, race, religion, place, identity, othering
Feminism & Women’s Rights: Inclusion, equality, economic participation, educational participation, patriarchal values, liberation, intersectionality, dominion, freedom of choice,
Fluvial Geomorphology: Distinct landforms resulting from the processes of rivers
Formal & Informal Employment: Income, education, opportunity, security, pensions, profit motive, private ownership, public ownership, social mobility
Geology: Structure of the earth, lithosphere, rock types, rock cycle, structure, joints and bedding planes
GIS: Big data, open data, remote sensing, privacy, right to privacy, open societies, firewalls, surveillance capitalism, state surveillance, digital citizenship
Glacial Geomorphology: Distinct landforms resulting from the processes of glaciers
Globalisation: Historic and acceleration of interconnectedness, time-space compression through containerisation and digitisation, trade, the silk road, belt and maritime road, internationalism, reification
Governance & Corruption: Local, National, and Global, where power lies and who decides, who ‘wins’ and who ‘loses’
Greenhouse Effect: Solar Radiation, reflection, albedo, atmospheric concentration, carbon sinks, Mauna Loa observatory and conflict over it’s location,
Imperialism, Colonialism, & Decolonisation: We and They, atlanticism, Anglo-sphere, dominion, colourism, whiteness, orientalism, sovereignty, military and cultural empires, colonies, colonial migrations, settler-colonialism, jingoism, negative-stereotyping and prejudice, othering, independence, liberation, critiquing eurocentrism, centring indigenous voices, restoring indigenous place names
Income & Purchasing Power: Gross, net, and disposable incomes, it’s contextual exchange value, how it correlates to education and opportunities, relation to class and social reproduction
Industrialisation & Deinsdustrialisation: Employment structures, economic and social transitions, multiplier effect, land-use, economic shifts, unemployment, spirals of decline, dawn of liberty,
Informal Settlements & Tenure: Rights, legality, perceptions, terminology, characteristics, prejudice and discrimination
Landscape: Elevation, latitude, profile, underlying geology, landforms, beauty, appreciation, land use, profit-motive, value, capitalism
Location: How we communicate place
Map Projections: Advantages, disadvantages, compromise, accuracy, Tissot’s indicatrix, north-centre-dominance, power dynamics, meridians, latitude and longitude, the M4 clock, nautical miles
Migration: Citizenship, patterns of movement and their measurement, mobility, Asylum, Refuge, seeking asylum and refuge, freedom of movement, visas, registrations, exemptions, the right to work, the role and impacts of remittances, Hukou and Kafala systems, links to prejudice, discrimination, and racism
Perception & Representation: How places, people, cultures, individuals and societies are viewed, critiques of Eurocentrist perspectives
Pollution: Air, Water, Land, Sound, and Visual, environmental justice and unequal spaces, clean air acts
Race & Racism: Interpersonal, institutional, and systematic racism, anti-racism
Region: Groupings of places by shared similarities or proximity, both internationally and internally
Rights: Civil and Human, linked to ideas of status, justice, and equity
Settlement & Urbanisation: Urban Morphology, land rent, right of tenure, urban ecology, impacts of segregation and gentrification, measures of density, distribution, stratification, change, sense of place and space
Socialism: State Ownership, social ownership, central planning, social democracy, co-operatives, redistribution, anti-capitalism
Supply Chains: Organisation of people, systems, mechanisms, laws, resources, materials, actions, as well as social responsibility, traceability, emissions and pollution, public responsibilities, profit motives
Surface Physical Processes: The weathering, erosion, transportation and deposition of material to form new and distinct landscapes
Tax & Taxation: Government funding, spending, collection, accountability, access to welfare and public services
Tectonics & Continental Drift: Continental drift and it’s evidence, rifts and orogeny, history of discovery, Pangea and Gondwanaland, plate margins, earthquakes and volcanoes
Trade & Tariffs: Local, National, and Global Trade, Trading Blocs, Direct, Free, Fair. and Mass Trade, Liberalisation, Protectionism and the WTO
Weather and Climate: Processes and phenomena in the atmosphere, it’s links to the surface, how we measure and categorise weather and climate