I learned a lot about the importance of learning the *facts* of US history while writing BUILDING BETTER CITIZENS, so I've been working it into homeschooling my 5th grader this weird year. One piece that was missing for D is how geography is related to history--

It's hard to understand history if you don't know where anything is located, or how places are related to one another, so we've been doing lots of map work. He's been working on learning the states for about two weeks--he began knowing 16, and yesterday he filled in all 50!

A lot of the history he was getting in school before was frustrating for him. He was always being asked to "critically think" about pieces of history information when some very very basic history information was missing--like where the states are located. @karenvaites

I talked to Natalie Wexler about this absurdity in this article she wrote--my 9yo was asked in 4th grade SS to write a 5-paragraph essay on the concept of "Manifest Destiny." He had no concept of the "American West" or how it related to anything. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2020/07/20/parents-on-remote-learning-part-2-when-schools-falter-do-it-yourself/?sh=2e3ae5f5579b

This #homeschooling year, in part, is trying to remedy that. We are focusing on some gaps in his knowledge. I learned a lot from @natwexler's book The Knowledge Gap, which looks at how this unfolds in public schools. What she describes I was seeing first hand. But I also learned

a lot about teaching knowledge to younger kids from #homeschooling experts The Well Trained Mind @WTMpress, and @lindenwaldorf school. They view fact knowledge as a developmental phase--before kids can think about stuff, they have to have something to think about!

Which is also fully supported by cognitive science. Most importantly, I was alarmed by what I learned about how little history understanding MS and HS students have--often because they have missed this crucial first step. Can't critically think about stuff you don't know. /end