Geography/History Guest Post

As many of you know I am very serious about seeing that Selena is educated in Geography and History. I feel it is within these subjects that we can expand a child’s world of learning for years to come. I asked Ticia from Adventures in Mommydom who use to be an elementary teacher to give us her point of view as to why these two subjects really do need our attention, and why we need to be teaching them to our children.

It is my hope that you will enjoy her post, and take to heart just what she is saying:

I’m so excited, this is my first ever guest post, and I’m very thankful to Debbie for asking me to do this.

She wanted to get the viewpoint of a former teacher on geography and history. I also am a bit of an oddity, in that I was an elementary education major with a minor in history. So, that tells you I’m a big history buff.

First, I want to say in the United States , we really give history and geography the short end of the stick. In elementary it’s hardly taught at all because they focus so much on math and reading because those are tested then. When I was teaching we allotted about 30 minutes each day for either Social Studies or science. The reality was we never really used the textbooks that we had because they weren’t all that great. They didn’t really go into all that much depth about the topics, and really just provided enough information to bore the kids over and over again.

The other thing we do to those subjects is we don’t have people who are interested in them teach the subject. Instead, they’re taught by coaches. Coaches are required to teach a couple of non-PE related classes, and they’re usually given history or geography because they’re not tested on and if the kids don’t learn what does it matter?

Well, I’ll tell you why it matters. Because you can look at history and see why you shouldn’t do things, or why you should.

Now, this is where it can also get political. But, you can look at what happens when you have a history of appeasement, and it never goes well. Before World War 2 most of Europe believed Adolf Hitler when he said he only wanted “X” and they gave it to him. Then suddenly he had conquered half of Europe . By the same token, if you have a group of terrorists who say they want you to just leave them alone, it doesn’t work to say “Okay, we’ll give you what you want,” instead they keep attacking and taking more.

Not only can you apply it to modern day political situations, but it helps explain how we are working now. Did you know that Texas didn’t have a female governor for almost 100 years? That’s because their first female governor kept within the letter of the law barely, and Texans remembered it so well they didn’t elect another one until the early 90s.

It also can give you insight into how you should act. There are so many great examples in history of the single person who stood up to what was wrong, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther, our Founding Fathers. That list could go on, but that’s what I thought of in 10 seconds. There are great inspirational stories.

So, why learn geography?

For one, because there are three important things to remember about history and real estate, “location, location, location.” Where it is effects so much of what is going on. That’s certainly true now, why are we so worried about a 100 mile piece of land called Israel ? Because it effects how the whole rest of that region goes, and that affects our oil prices.

Also, you look really stupid if you don’t have a token idea of where things are. This is how Jay Leno and the like get so many “person on the street” interviews, most people have no clue where people are. Think about the huge furor when Sarah Plain (in a comment I think was partially in jest) said “I can see Russia from my window,” and the big deal people made over that.

Now, apply it on a smaller scale and your child is interviewing at a major company and they don’t know where Portugal is. Why don’t they? Because it wasn’t taught on a test, so it wasn’t taught to them.

I freely admit I’m horrid at geography, it never hugely interested me, but I don’t want that for my kids. I want them to learn and know where things are and how cultures are different. And what makes each culture special, because they all are.