[Joy]

I'll tell you the truth, History was not one of my favs in school. But when I began to homeschool, my mom told me to look at history as Great Literature.

Now, my mom only has a high-school education, but she was a great teacher. She taught me the value of history and literature. She helped birth a love for writing in me.

I can not speak for all American's nor the public school system, as I went to a private school. But from what I have seen, America's students are lagging behind in the Math/Science and Social Sciences/Humanities. Some of the students that I met at my college, fresh out of high school, did not even know which countries were North and South of us.

Many of the students didn't know how to write a decent term paper in the standard MLA format - somehow that had slipped by the teachers.

During my 6 yrs at the college - I had a triple major - There was only 1 History major!

I do not completely blame the American students for the lack of knowledge in these fields. The teachers and the parents are partly at fault. If the parents don't encouraqe their children to read, the child is not going to progress to a higher level of learning, nor will have the desire to learn until it is too late.

Also, we need teachers in the school system that have a love for the subject that they are teaching. When a child see exhuberence in a teacher concerning a subjuct, this will make a child want to learn.

A personal story - I knew that for my major I was going to have to take a literature class. Don't get me wrong, I love reading, it was just that I didn't want someone to force me to read certain sections. I chose British Lit 1. We started with "The Last Surviors Speech" and "Beowulf." As we were reading these, my professor would read selections to us and she would even go as far as to act some scenes out. I was strange to see this 100lb lady pretending to weild a sword as she was reading. This class was the impetus for me reading the Old English classics and falling in love with them. Now I act exactly like this professor when reading [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]