So many questions...

Yesterday our Social Studies lesson took us on a detour, as it often does. One of the questions in our lesson was about giving African Americans the right to vote. The question was why did some people want to give them the vote and what did some people fear the repercussions would be if they did vote.  Well, this opened up a ton of conversations and questions. What is a minority? Why were minorities treated differently?  Why is it hard for some minorities to get good jobs or a good education? How does this lead to poverty?  Why are there poor children? Why is it hard to get out of poverty?  We even digressed into what is the minimum wage and how would a person live on such a wage. We figured a person could work full time at McDonald's and make about $1,300 per month. What is the average rent in our town?


I love it when homeschooling takes this path!  Sarah really understands the historical context of certain issues.  It take more than a generation to overcome a century of discrimination. What is the responsibility of the government to help the poor and what is the responsibility of the community? were among the conversations.  At first Sarah just wants to do the lesson and resists some of the deeper lessons but once we get rolling, she begins to really think. We talked a little bit about the plight of the Native Americans and the Japanese Americans in the interment camps.  She realized discrimination crosses ethnic and cultural lines and that over history many groups have faced horrendous civil rights violations. 


These are the days that I love homeschool because we were not restricted by a time period, we could go where the lesson took us. The bell was not going to ring and there was no grade, just plain learning, for both of us.