It used to amaze me no end during my decades as a junior high/middle school teacher about how little the children who got to me knew about history, geography, or authors. (I taught English.)
I had honors students in the seventh and eighth grades, and many of them could not find, say, Washington, D.C., or London, England, on a map. If you gave them a map of the world with no writing on it, they'd ask which way was the right-side up?
So, I requisitioned pull-down maps and had them all over my classroom. I NEVER taught a story or novel that had a specific setting that we didn't pull the map down and find the spot for it. And if we were reading historical fiction (JOHNNY TREMAIN, for example), I ALWAYS brought in history and biography to extend the learning.
I often wondered what on earth the children did in their elementary years in school that they knew no states or countries of the world by the time they got to me. They might not have remembered them after they left me, but for the one or two years that I taught them (and when we had ninth grade in our school, I taught some kids for three years), they were quizzed unmercifully on history and geography as well as language arts where appropriate.
