We’ve pulled off at several stops because we saw signs on the road pointing to an attraction or tourist site. Every time we stop, I give my daughter a new assignment. I ask her to research the site and do a short write up about what she learned. We then share what we learned while I’m driving.
As we were leaving Oak Ridge, TN and heading to Atlanta, I decided to stop in Chattanooga. I pulled into a rest area to look up places to visit. I saw a place called The Passage which is a landmark for where the Trail of Tears started.
When we pulled off I asked Jayla to look up where the name “Trail of Tears” originated. Not the history, just the name. She did a quick search and said, “Andrew Jackson.” I asked her to double check and make sure that was correct. Really, I was asking her to double check her source and to read the information because I knew she gave me the name of the first person that appeared. While I didn’t know where the title originated, I was closer to certainty that the same president that instituted the policy for the Cherokee’s removal from the land didn’t coin the name. My assumption was correct and she found the accurate name of the people that named it the Trail of Tears. All of this happened in less than two minutes.
We had about an hour drive before we would reach The Passage, we continued to discuss the event and I explained the importance of double checking information (fact-checking, looking at more than one source, ensuring the source is credible/reliable/reputable). I don’t want her to believe every (hell, any) meme that she sees. I don’t want her spewing rhetoric she heard from a YouTube scholar. I don’t even want her restating things I’ve told her when it is a personal view. I want her to formulate her own opinions and learn how to support her position(s) with facts. And, I’m not going to rant about it, but that ish is seriously lacking into today’s ‘who can post first” world. People only read the headlines. Some, not all. They regurgitate other’s ideologies without formulating their own.
This is why I homeschool (amongst many, many other reasons).
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