Subject Matter and Geography Education

As Subject Education appears, the idea of the subject becomes clear and the goals of Subject Education come to focus on character building. Therefore, Geography Subject Education contributes to the scientific explication of the original nature of geography and the reformation of Geography Education by the help of the theories of Geographic Education. Geography Subject Education emphasizes the deletion of contents irrelevant to character building and the extraction of Geography Education theories that make clear the selection of contents and instruction-learning method. Geographic education should contribute to students needed character building in a rapidly developing society. We would rather develop geographic education theories adjusted to Korea s own situation, through continuing research by specialists and the teachers of geographic education, than cautiously introduce theories from other nations. There are two methods in those researches, one of which focuses on books, and the other on exercise. The former is carried out by specialists for making theories, the latter, by the teacher of that subject through experimental lessons for finding new methods and con tents. New theories, methods, and contents can be appreciated, only after they have been generalized in the real classroom. Theories are useless if they are not suitable in Korea classrooms. It is difficult to rear suitable persons in the Korean situation without finding or developing the theories to be applied to Korean classrooms. Also, as the educational goals are different from each nation, region, and period, it is necessary that the research of geographic education should consider the situation in each region, students experiences and consciousness levels, and current issues. The goals, methods, and contents of geographic education may be different from nation to nation because of their differing situations.