hank Wrote:
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> I don't recall ever being taught about
> things like The National Road, the canal building
> era
The Transcontinental railroad, the national road, corduroy roads, the difficulty of travel in the pre-railroad era, even the importance of the international highway system were definitely mentioned in my district. The canal era got quite a bit of mention since the Ohio & Erie canal was local and significant to the area's history. Columbus, Magellan, and a bunch of conquistadores (Pizarro, Cortes, and others whom I can't recall without checking their names on Wikipedia) got the standard mentions. This was some decades ago so Columbus was still taught as though he was some sort of unique visionary and not the stupid but lucky jerk that he actually was. All of the above was taught at different times, usually different years, of course. Transportation wasn't taught as its own end, but usually received at least some mention in conjunction with other units. I cannot complain about the quality of my early education. I had *no* teachers I regarded as incompetent until about 7th grade (and even then--not many), which is getting old enough that an inept teacher here and there isn't as disastrous as it can be for the very small children.
The district the daughter attends seems a mixed bag: If she has a good teacher, everything's fine. If she gets a bad teacher however, it's totally worthless. It appears the mindset of "pass them no matter what" has taken root and in essence the children learn if they feel like it. They don't even give letter grades to the elementary school children anymore. Since kindergarten the wife and I practically have had to quasi-home-school the daughter just to make sure she stays at where she needs to be because the school won't even bother telling us if she's falling behind in anything. I find the sheer indifference disgusting. I'm told that's pretty much standard now. She's presently in third grade. So far she's received next to no education of American history beyond cursory mention of George Washington and a few others. Right now her history is teaching about the medieval era. Odd, perhaps, for elementary school children, but I don't see that the order matters in the end as long as they go over it all. If they don't, I will, anyway.
