The Relevance of Geography
Summary
In recent years, adolescents have been choosing geography less and less as a subject
in upper secondary education. The arguments for this decrease, mentioned by the adolescents
themselves, are that geography has no use for later and that they do not see the relevance of
it. In addition, adolescents move in diverse environments of which school and home are a
significant part and therefore this research also looks at the role of teachers and the role of
parents in understanding relevance. Namely, because of their development, adults look at
relevance from a different, or rather, broader perspective. To hear a more profound opinion
from the adolescents on the relevance of geography, survey and interview data were collected
among students from ninth grade pre-university classes. In this class-level they already had
some years of geography behind them to form personal believes on the relevance of
geography as well as to assess the role their teachers and parents play in the shape of these
believes. In the current study, adolescents come to a reasonably positive assessment of
geography and the role of the teacher seems to play a greater role in understanding relevance
than the role of parents.