Back when we were homeschooling, a nice old gentleman asked my kids if they knew the capitals of all the states. They did not. That has never been on my list of truly important things to know. If you want your kids to know it, though, I can tell you the secret. It’s also the secret to learning other things about geography that are on my list of important things to know: location, place, human-environment interaction, movement, and region. Whatever you want to know, the secret is simple: rich context.
What’s rich context?
An experiment took two groups of people and gave them a list of 10 countries and their capitals. One group was told to read and practice the information for 10 minutes. The other group had ten minutes to read their list once. The first group had just the basics: “Paris is the capital of France” and the same for the rest of the countries.
The second group had one minute’s worth of real information for each capital and country. “Paris is the capital of France. It’s the home of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. It’s in the North of France, near Germany to the east and Belgium to the north. About two million people live in the city limits.”
Which group did better? The second group. Having rich context allows us to attach new information to our overall framework of knowledge about the world, so we understand it better and can remember it more easily.
How do you get rich context?
The value of rich context is not about what’s on a test. It’s about the way human brains work. So any additional information that makes the place more real to you can work.
For example, fewer than 10% of Americans can identify Uzbekistan on a map without help. We made this Turkish-style bread with these special bread stamps from Uzbekistan. Our bread is not exactly authentic — authentic Uzbeki bread is slapped on the wall of a giant clay oven to bake — but we can confidently find Uzbekistan every time.
We like to bake together, so we often make bread from different places. Check out the slideshow below for some of our international bakes. Again, they may not be fully authentic and they are not perfect — but we can find their homes on the map for sure.
Not bread bakers? No problem. Sing a song, learn a dance, play a local sport or game, read a book, take a trip, copy some characteristic art, study the animals — everything you do to enrich the context of the basic information increases your chances of remembering that basic information. Your family’s not basic, right? You can explore everything you find interesting about the place you’re studying.
And your kids will remember the basics, too.
