Homeschool Lesson Family Style
Yesterday we had one of the coolest homeschool lessons, it was one part hike, one part American history lesson, one part wildcrafting class.
We went to the East Rosebud Trailhead at Alpine Lake, and hiked towards Elk (or Elizabeth) Lake. It's a 3.5 mile hike, easy by hiker standards but for Yokie 3.5 miles uphill at this altitude is pretty challenging. The trail is well-maintained, in fact it's the single most popular trail in the Beartooth Absaroka wilderness area; commonly called The Beaten Path it's part of a 26 mile trail that goes from the East Rosebud Trailhead all the way to Colter Pass outside of Cooke City.
As we were hiking, we cycled through 100 questions on flashcards. These are the 100 things you have to know to pass the American Citizenship test. Yokie takes her citizenship test on the 29th in Helena, so we've been prepping for it. I have to say, I'm a history buff, and indeed a history minor from MSU, and I only knew for sure about 85 of the questions when we started. I would say the average American would know less than 40 or so. Some examples:
* How many voting members are there in the House of Representatives?
* Name one of the authors of the Federalist Papers.
* When was the Constitution adapted?
* Who was president during WWI?
* What is the Rule of Law?
I know it's maybe your immediate reaction to say that you got this, and those questions and 95 more of the same would be no problem, I had the same initial reaction, but, honestly, how many Americans would be able to answer these correctly? Even the easiest one, about the 435 members of the House, how many people who really listen to NPR or the Blaze Network, or really watch the news and are interested in politics, could answer that correctly? The author of the Federalist Papers, that's a tricky one even for history buffs. If you know the era you can take a crack at it and maybe get lucky with a good guess (which is what I did), but to really know that for sure is to display a very rare command of American history. I doubt that even here in Montana where so much is named after him, many people have a command of Madison's legacy.
As a side note, one of the many things that's lost in the current debate about immigration is the perspective of the people going through it. Maybe it's different for Latin immigrants, or for people not marrying a citizen, I'm sure that everybody has a slightly different experience.
What I can say is that for us the commonly held perception that marriage to an American grants easy and unfettered access to citizenship has been far from the truth. We have spent a lot of time, money, and effort to get this far and we aren't there yet, and we've been married for 12 years. And I'd love to see any of my American friends or family take on Yokie now in an American history or civics quiz. She'd crush pretty much everybody now.
Anyway, there we were yesterday, on one of the most stunning hikes in the world, on a bluebird, perfect, hot Alpine day, walking up the trail, doing a family civics quiz. At one point we walked right past a lady about my mom and dad's age, walking alone down the trail as we walked up, and she yielded to us. Right as we walked by, Rose got her seventh answer in a row right. She's listened to the flashcards so many times, she now knows more American history than most American adults.
The smile on that lady's face, as she took in the scene of our family hiking up the hill and Rose nailing a quiz on pretty tough civics questions, it was priceless. In that one smile I saw validation and encouragement for everything that Homeschooling stands for. To be tackling questions like that, with a rigorous memorization format, with the effective but underrated and indeed abandoned (by modern educators) flashcard approach, and to do it while walking, out in the woods, on a day like that, it was a perfect homeschooling moment.
Oh, and BTW, we accidentally timed the raspberry wildcrafting mission of our lives. I've tried and failed dozens of times to time good raspberry picking missions around here. Apparently I've been going too late. If you go right now the Beartooth front, the raspberries are off the charts. Thimbleberries too up higher, but down at the bottom the raspberries were the best ever. We never made it more than 100 meters without stopping, and we kept saying to ourselves, OK, that's it, we have to move on, but then you'd see another patch even redder and more filled with raspberries than the last.
Great reward for Rose and Yokie for doing so well on the quiz.
And icing on the cake that was the best family homeschool day ever. Post pics soon.