Geography is often introduced to schoolchildren by having them look at maps as formal, conventional objects rather than as tools for analysing and communicating ideas about geographic relationships. But how effective is this? Recent research in cartographic communication and map perception suggests that geographic literacy is generally quite low. In Seeking New Horizons, Henry Castner proposes another approach: our focus should shift from maps to the ways in which geographic information -- and the relationships within it -- can be isolated and communicated graphically. With the adoption of a perspective which focuses on the user, children would be encouraged to discover the concepts underlying geographic thinking in its most elemental and natural forms.

Castner developed this innovative perspective on geographic education through observation of the Orff-Schulwerk technique of music education. This pedagogical method provides an organizational framework within which the primitive elements and concepts of music can be introduced, experienced, and explored, and auditory discrimination developed. The process of improvisation is the focal point of the Schulwerk. Castner suggests that the numerous educational benefits of improvisation can be obtained in geographic education by the process of "mapping." He defines mapping as graphic description, analysis, and presentation in a problem-solving context. After more than two decades of research in cartographic communication, Castner concludes that success in examining and analysing landscapes, and images representative of them, is dependant upon developed skills in visual discrimination.

Seeking New Horizons describes a rationale for linking basic visual discriminations to their logical extensions in the concepts that are fundamental to geographic thinking, thus providing challenging approaches to developing spatial awareness, graphic literacy, and geographic understanding. In addition, Castner identifies eight basic concepts which would allow students and teachers to work interactively with spatial information and, over time, with increasingly complex and sophisticated tools and at increasingly abstract levels of generalization.