Geographic Education in The Age of Humanities : Postmodernistic Demands Make It in Again

Ours is the time of a new revival of humanitarian values & of increased importance of “human angle to sciences, time to re vert to concept of education as enlightenment rather than simple accretion of factual knowledge. Emerging Postmodern world is one of increasingly recognized & re-affirmed cultural diversity. Already now cultual factors are recognised as major differentiating factors behind divergent development paths of regions & countries. A whole new discipline of cultural political economy” is emerging (i.e. frequent discussions on “confucian capitalism ). Culture also may well serve as link concept for geography s eternal topic of man-environment relationships. All the above-said brings Culturally-Biased Human Geography into the focus of geography teaching. As the skill of cross-cultural dialogue & cultivation of tolerance become basic needs for world s survival & prosperity, geographic education should become more ambidexterous. It s already well-developed arm is the teaching of local/national geographies that make one a patriot of particular place & culture. Still, without equally detailed & sympathetic knowledge of other regions & peoples, however distant, one is doomed to grow up into a sort of parochial & narrow-minded cultural fun damentalist. Thus, it s time to bring World Regional Geography into focus. This also entails the necessity to fight eurocentric biases in world geographies. The majority of currently dominant world cultures are relatively space-indifferent (or placeless). They are much more concerned with the passing of time (the cult of progress in westernism) than with experiencing places. Dynamic change with concurrent notions of spread of novelties (or innovation) leading to standardization of places has gained upper hand over (en joying continuity & harmony with one s milieu). But to people, places mean stability. New space-awareness: desire to tenderly cultivate” one s place & strengthen links with it should be used to develop another node of geographic teaching. One s familiar place & region should become the polygon to teach more utilitarian” skills of our science: ecology, locational analysis, com