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