Why is geography (as a school subject) important?

Question

Many students are now taking geography as a school subject, both in physical and human geography. Why is geography so important? What are the concrete examples of the use of geography in daily life (beside map reading skills)? How can we apply geography in our life? And what are the benefits of learning geography?

Answer 1

Maybe people need geography in later life

maybe they want to be geographers, or geologists, or miners!

given the choice, I would chose geography over French any day!!!

Answer 2

The literal meaning of the word would be: describe the earth. In practice it is a lot more complex than that.

Geography teaches people to understand relationships that are spatial (of space) in nature. Simple geography relationships we all take for granted are distance, travel time, elevation, etc. THere are others more complex, such as population density or weather patterns. Geography is useful to us because it helps us interpret spatial problems. A simple example is how do you decide where to locate a new grocery store and how to stock it? Various elements should be considered. For example, an affluent neighborhood will get a grocery store that sells expensive import beers over the domestic cheaper beer. The retail industry depends on demographic data that is geographically analyzed for deciding store locations.

Current election strategists use geography, spatially distributed demographic and political data, and geographic analysis to decide what type of advertising is most effective. Check out the CNN election website and look at their various political issue maps.

This is just scratching the surface. Geography is an important subject. The web has a lot of information. Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography

Answer 3

Geography is important because we'll use the skills in our life.

Physical geography: For example, the cause and sign of earthquake. Earthquake may cause tsunami, but if we know the signs, we can avoid the tsunami. Hurricane is also predicted using the help of geography.

Human geography: Urban and settlement problems: we're able to develop some solutions. Economic activity and problems are part of geography. So is employment structures and patterns. For example, if there is a great demand of chemical engineers, we might want to take chemical engineering major in college.

As you can see, geography helps us to make informed decisions and solve problems.