Reply #50: I know what you mean, but...

[SmokingJacket]

it's not an either or thing. If they get Iran and Iraq switched around on a map, it's not a big deal, and if they can explain the long history of the two countries' antagonism toward each other, well, that's much more important.

However... you do have to know that the countries border each other to understand what's going on.

It may not seem important to know where Louisiana is on a map, but if you don't understand that it's on the Gulf of Mexico and that it's at the mouth of the Mississippi River, then you don't really have a CLUE why New Orleans flooded and what might be done about it and who or what to blame.

In my Ideal School that I'm going to start one day, kids would learn to identify places on maps as BACKGROUND for understanding history and politics -- memorizing facts would not be the end goal, but they would definitely be learned. You can do both critical thinking and rote learning -- they complement each other!

Or as I like to say, you can't think critically if you don't know anything to think critically about...