Geography in History: a Necessary Connection in teaching Social Studies Geography and history are complementary subjects best taught together within the social studies curriculum. It is part of the collected wisdom of teachers that onecannot teach history without geography or geography without history. Both subjectshave been emphasized in high-profile curriculum reform reports produced byvarious organizations, such as the Bradley Commission on History in Schools, theEducation for Democracy Project of the American Federation of Teachers, and theNational Commission on Social Studies in the Schools. But most social studiesteachers are primary teachers of history. They are ignoring an important part ofhistory because they do not include geography as part of the teaching repertoire.The geographic perspective can enrich the study of history by helping students graspthe significance of location, the inevitability of change, and the importance of humanperceptions at given times in the past. Helping students to become more informedgeographically means teaching better history.HypothesisHow should classroom instructors proceed to connect geography with history in thecurriculum. I believe that answering this question will involve three assumptions:It is impossible to understand the present without understanding geography.It is impossible to understand the present without understanding the past.It is impossible to understand the past without understanding geography.In other words, the rationale for history (studying the past to understand thepresent) requires knowing geography: todays geography and the geography ofdifferent places at different times in the past.Synopsis of ResearchBradley Commission-recognizes the relationship between geography andhistory as a matrix of time and place, and as context for events.Florida Commission on Social Studies Education published Connections,Challenges, Choices which presents the objectives, subjects, topics, ...
