But that is not the way it was taught when I was in school.
Well no matter. It’s a fun thing to bring up every now and then. :)
Did you learn “Are you afraid of a tiger?” to help you remember the Tigris and the Euphrates?
We had strange teachers when I was a kid. One of them had us draw a horse every morning, until the last week of school, when we were told to draw a chariot.
They taught us things without the political/social implications.
In seventh grade, we learned about gibberilic acid (which makes plants grow bigger but not necessarily better) and the stuff that seeds clouds to make rain. No mention was ever made of the implications of these two practices. They left it to us to figure it out.
In second grade we drew saber-toothed tigers and mammoths, but no one ever said what a shame it was that species had disappeared. We got it but not in a preachy way.
It’s something like the Montessori approach, where the kids discover two vessels, one tall and thin and the other short and fat, and play with them as they discover that both have the same volume. No instructions are given, and the word “volume” or anything like it is never spoken. This is in a classroom for two-year-olds.
We learned that the Fertile Crescent was between the Euphrates and the Tigris and that today it is desert. Talk about environmentalism deep in your bones.