My dad was career Navy and I had the benefit of a private school for my primary years. It was Calvert System curriculum
and in Istanbul for American progeny of American diplomatic, business, and military families so I was way ahead of the kids in public school when we got back to Virginia. I got more actual History in 2-4th grade than I got through 12th grade in American public schools. My favorite TV was the News. Daddy liked to talk to us about the places he had been
stationed and I had had a Geography class in Istanbul so I was pretty much aware of the world from an early age.
I think I was about 7 when we were given a Geography book of world maps called the Kiwi Atlas ...
It had a red cover and the outline in black a kiwi on the front with the title Kiwi Atlas...We used that same book for several years...
Inside all the British Commonwealth countries were in a deep pink and other countries were other colors...
Much of South Africa was that pink in those days and had different names..
We learnt the capitals of many of the major countries and the geographies and histories of most of the pink ones..
We had to be able to draw freehand from memory the outlines of Canada and other British countries and name the provinces and their capitals...
How many young children can tell you where the Yukon is or the history of Hudson Bay or who Wolf and Montcalm were ???
For The United States we would draw the borders and knew that Washington was the capital and could identify the ‘corn belt’ and the ‘wheat belt” and a few of the eastern states but little history other than the Civil War and WWII...
My British teachers must have been still mad about something the Yanks had done... :)
When we were about 3rd Grade, we had scrap books in which we pasted photos of our assigned countries and articles from newspapers and magazines...I remember my group had the Antarctic and Australia...Aussie bored me, but I loved working on the Antarctic...
When I was about 10 I drew a line through Europe following the highways and showed my mother telling her I was going to visit all those countries one day...She pointed to Russia and said that I could not go there but she couldnt explain why to my satisfaction...How do you fully explain Communism to a young child who has only known freedom ???
I count myself very fortunate to have gone to school in a place and during a time when children were actually taught patriotism and the history of their own country and much of the world...
Ive been to Istanbul...The Hagia Sophia and the underground cisterns are amazing...