Page 1 - What Is Geography?
For many people, geography means knowing where places are. It is true that knowing where places are and something of their characteristics is important, just as knowing the alphabet is important for reading or the multiplication tables for arithmetic; but geography involves much more. Geography is the study of places on Earth and their relationship with each other. Often the study of geography begins with one's home community and expands as a person gains greater experience. Thus, geography provides a conceptual link for children between home, school, and the world beyond. Geographers study how people interact with the environment and with each other from place to place, and they classify Earth into regions in order to draw generalizations about the complex world in which we live. Because it deals with where and how people live, geography is rich in material that relates to international understading, multi-cultural concerns, and environmental education.
The tools of geography help us understand places. The tool most indentified with geographers is the map, but they also use different kinds of statistical information, photographs and images of many kinds, and a wide variety of data collected by other methods. They also rely upon their own observations and those of others found in sources such as descriptive geography texts, histories, diaries, and journals.
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