Know Your Cuts of Meat (or in this case, state capitals)

Yeah, I'm one of those bloggers. I write, something shiny comes along, and my blog sits stale for so long I have to figure out all the settings again. Here I am a year later, with more totally unbelievable stories.

Today's unbelievable story is brought to you by 9th grade geography class. I present to you Exhibit A, photos that my son took during class. (Using the phone during school hours is a topic for another time.) I was really confused at what I was looking at, are they mentoring elementary kids, was there a sub giving them busy work, what is with the odd cartoon character?

And that's when my son said they were given this two-sided worksheet to learn the states and capitals song. You've got to be kidding me. Back it up, these are high school students and they don't know the states and capitals yet? And you're going to teach it to them through a song that is complicated with at least one mispronunciation? Oh, and the worksheet has spelling errors too, where's my red pen? You can view this delight on YouTube to get the full effect of what I'm talking about.

I learned this material in 4th grade. We were given a map and we had to fill it in. No song, no multiple choice, not even a "draw a line to match". We just knew it. We changed school districts this summer, so does this suggest that none of the 600 other 9th graders have ever learned the states and capitals? Here's the icing on the cake. The class test average was 42%. Is it because as teenagers they were too cool to learn the song and tossed the worksheet in the trash, or are they incapable of knowing that Pierre is the capital of South Dakota, and it's not pronounced Pee-air!?And we wonder what is wrong with education in America.