The educative value of geography, as the core of its pedagogical worth, derives from the perspective of individual development. Relying on the discipline's unique knowledge, methods, and philosophies, it aims to establish an essential connection between the academic field and personal growth. Against the backdrop of proposed reforms to rename secondary school geography curricula as earth science, the systematic articulation of geography's educative value holds not only significant academic merit but also urgent practical relevance. Based on the ontological attributes of geography as a discipline, this paper preliminarily constructs a comprehensive educative value system through five dimensions: cultivating ethics, enhancing intelligence, strengthening physique, nurturing aesthetics, and practicing labor education. It reveals geography's unique contribution within the comprehensive educational framework of moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor education, aiming to support the effective exploration of geography's educative values and promote the holistic achievement of educational objectives in the new era, while providing a fresh perspective on the debate over whether secondary school geography curricula should be renamed to earth science.

Graduate training institutions in geography serve as crucial venues for the production and dissemination of geographical knowledge, and function as significant platforms for enhancing the discipline's capacity to support economic and social development. Drawing upon multi-source data, this paper investigates the growth trajectory and spatial distribution evolution of graduate training institutions in geography in China from 1978 to 2024, aiming to reveal their developmental achievements, influencing factors, and existing challenges. The research findings indicate that the development of these institutions has proceeded in distinct phases and has been asynchronous across different categories, including discipline-oriented and majors-oriented institutions, master-only versus integrated master-doctoral institutions, and those under various administrative affiliations. Over time, China's graduate training institutions in geography have developed a globally competitive system with a robust framework for independent talent cultivation, alongside a "majors driving discipline" approach that mitigates the risk of overly narrow tendency of geoscientisation. These achievements have been driven by geography's inherent interdisciplinarity and shaped by the demands of China's socio-economic development, advances in geographical education, the graduate training system, and relevant policies on enrollment and degree program construction. Nevertheless, the development of China's graduate training institutions in geography faces several key challenges, primarily including the vulnerability of interdisciplinary institutions during departmental restructuring; difficulties in integrating disciplines within academic programs; the ambiguous affiliation and diluted disciplinary identity of historical geography; and concerns regarding the long-term sustainability of doctoral programs in geography education.