I meant well.

I got the older of the two boys, JouAndar, into trouble today at school. Last night at the dinner table, we were reviewing his homework. He was asked to list all of the continents, and all the capitals in Europe he knew. Perfect, I could finally help. I listed the seven continents for him, at which point he told me his teacher explained to him that there were only five. I however, recalling my 4th grade geography well, was insistent that there was indeed 7 continents, then looked it up on the Internet just to make sure. Indeed, wikipedia proved that there were seven.

The capital game was quite entertaining as well, as I don´t quite know all of the country names in Spanish yet. So they gave me a map with all the countries on it, and I told them the capitals. I knew nearly a dozen. I was pleased.

Tonight´s dinner however, ran much differently. When JouAndar pulled out his homework, he indeed had five clearly listed continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, America and Oceania. I was impressed that he titled it Oceania as opposed to Australia, because he didn´t seem to understand that concept the night before. Yet, he was missing Antarctica, and clumped the two Americas together. He told his teacher that his exchange student had helped him with his homework (which was "wrong"). His teacher then asked him if I lived in a Spanish speaking country. Apparently, Hispanic countries are taught that there are indeed only 5 continents. Antarctica is considered part of Oceania, but doesn´t really even count as an existence, because no one lives there. The Americas aren´t separated, and thus are grouped together. I want to ask his teacher then, why Europe and Asia aren´t considered one continent then. I sent JouAndar in with a mission, ask his teacher the definition of a continent, because I am really interested to know how they justify this. It is time´s like this when I really appreciate living with a family that has kids, otherwise we´d never have conversations like this.