As a society, we are less and less comfortable in our localities. We have embraced the idea of a globalized placelessness, where everything, everywhere, resonates with a sameness. What do we lose, educationally and in society at large, when we reduce our inhabited places to those components that provide material wealth alone? If students and teachers do not have the opportunity to work within and develop a relationship with place, how can we ask them to take on the challenges of climate change, of finite fresh water supplies, and the burgeoning necessity of weaning ourselves from oil. All of these challenges demand a respect, indeed a love for place, wherein lessons can be learned and knowledge stored away so that we can transform society for the better. We need to make place part of our scholastic mandate. It is not test scores we are worried about, but the viability of our communities and places for tomorrow's generation. (Contains 7 endnotes.)