Introduction [Mapping the Moral Geographies of Education: Character, Citizenship and Values]

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces ‘moral geographies’ and outlines approaches to studying childhood, youth and education within disciplinary human geography. It provides an overview of the key distinctions between citizenship and character, and outlines the wider philosophies that have shaped institutional spaces for children and young people. The book focuses on the growing character agenda in England in the past decade, within the context of devolution. It highlights the significant role of military ethos providers within this landscape, demonstrating a growing everyday militarism in spaces designed for children and young people. The book explores the role of ideal selves in formal education, mobilised through ideas of behaviour and collective school ethos that characterise the contemporary spatialities of character education. It also focuses on one of the core pillars of character education and its values-based understandings and its related class-based moral geographies of gumption.