nhiwi:

Because today I found out that she didn’t know what states and continents were. I was trying to play trivia with her and my question was “What is the largest state in the US?” and I expected her to say either California or Texas. Instead she told me “Canada.” And then our convo was…

We seem to be on a sad decline in our knowledge base.  It comes down to a lot of things.  We can’t just blame the education system, because while they do play a part in this issue, it’s not the only reason why kids aren’t learning things they should know.  It could be anything from the teachers they learn from to the actual child’s will to learn.  Even parenting can come into play.  A school can have the closest thing to perfect in curriculum and have the best teachers ever, but if a kid doesn’t care, the kid isn’t going to learn.

But just the same, if the education a kid is receiving is not good at all, the kid is not going to know any better, even if they try their hardest.  In second grade I had a teacher that never gave us spelling because she believed it wasn’t necessary in life.  Honestly, without google and spell checkers I’d have a complete mess of misspelled words.  I’ve gotten a lot better since then, but every year after second grade I was a year behind in my spelling abilities.