TwoMoose- this is where I fundamentally have struggles with curriculum in the 21st century! Why on earth would you spend time learning capitals of countries? It's easy to look it up on the internet or on a map. Being familiar with the landscape and the locations is one thing, but I see too many teachers spend a month on memorizing mapping. Booooring and totally not practical!
If teachers weren't afraid to work on higher level taxonomy questions for all the students, we'd be better preparing them for problem solving jobs of the future. Even the SATs don't care if you know the capital of Hungary.
Better example- I was observing a teacher last week. She was leading 7th graders in an interesting compare and contrast of the fall of Rome to current US politics. The students were able to draw similarities and differences between what lead to the fall of Rome and the current political climate in the US, make assumptions and conclusions. No homework required, actually no homework even allowed because it would have been unduly influenced by outside opinion.
Or she could have had them just memorize the 5 major factors leading to the fall of Rome...
