Making geographical futures

Although there are surprisingly few academic books about geography with the term future or futures in their titles, this paper indicates that for much of the twentieth century geographers contributed to important discussions about the shape of worlds to come. The paper offers a review of these debates within Anglo-American geography and links them to continuing debates about educational futures in schools. Developing the work of Andrew Ross, the paper argues that the “futures of education” field is divided between two forms of “futurology” – bourgeois and environmental. The paper argues that geography educators are more likely to draw upon perspectives from “environmental futurology” and discusses three substantive areas within geography where questions of the future are highly visible.