What Does Geography Have to Do with History?

What a great question. The answer is you can’t possibly know where you are going, if you don’t know where you are or how you got there to begin with.

Online education often leads to a broader range of studies than traditional class rooms. Many students find they are more interested in their classes and do better than they had in an actual classroom setting.

To illustrate imagine a group of seventh grade students. The teacher asks “What does geography have to do with history?”  No one readily raises a hand, so the teacher is obligated to call on a student for the answer. Not wanting to appear foolish the student repeats the question” What does geography have to do with history?” the child continues to ponder and finally says “I don’t know!”

As a result the child is embarrassed and instead of participating in future discussions the student retreats.

In essence the student doesn’t enjoy the class and therefore associates a negative feeling with learning about geography and the connection it has to history or any other subject. 

Now imagine a student learning form an online curriculum. One of the outline questions is what does geography have to do with history?  The online student is intrigued by the question and prompted to do research. By researching the answer the student becomes engaged in the subject matter and the challenge of answering the question. The student develops a thirst for the more challenging topics that in a classroom setting would have been difficult and possibly traumatic.

What does geography have to do with history? History tells us where we have been and knowing where we have been helps to decide where we are going.  So next time anyone asks what geography has to do with history, smile and tell them “Everything!”