What do the Stripes on the US Flag Represent?

Yesterday, I received the following email,
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To Whom It May Concern:
I love your program so far - I just had a question/comment. In the course about "Flag Facts," it says that the 13 stripes stand for the original 13 states but I believe it should be the original 13 colonies. Am I correct?
Thank you so much for this wonderful tool!

-TV
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So, what do the stripes on the US flag represent?

HomeSchool Advantage used as our source for the US flag questions, the preparation material created by the US Department of Homeland Security for students who were taking the Naturalization Test, which gave our answer:
http://www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/Flashcard_questions.pdf.

However, a new version of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services exam gives TV's answer:
http://bit.ly/aDGsO8

Clearly, this is going to be a bit more difficult. To defend our answer, the flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner had 15 Stripes!
http://americanhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner

They added stripes when we added the states Kentucky and Vermont. Clearly, they were originally thinking that the stripes represented States. Although, for the Star Spangled Banner Flag, Tennessee, Ohio, and Louisiana are missing. Technically, they were states by the time of the assault on Fort McHenry in 1814.

Would the founders say the stripes represented the colonies? Did the original states intend to create a flag that reminded them of their time of colonial servitude or of their independent statehood! I, for one, say independent statehood.

However, the early Republic clearly had a problem. It is one thing to add a star to the flag every time a new state is added to the Union, and another to add a stripe. So they stopped adding stripes at 15. After the war of 1812 an Act of Congress created the basic structure of our current flag. Perhaps to not provide the British so large of a target in any future engagements. I looked up that act to see if it would say what the stripes were to represent, even HomeSchool Advantage is willing to defer to a definition that was an Act of Congress.

An Act to Establish a Flag of the United States

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=003/llsl003.db&recNum=0456

Unfortunately for us, the Act is silent on the matter of what the 13 stripes actually represent. So, it is left to interpretation.

Does anyone know of an original source document from a founder saying the stripes represent the colonies or the 13 states?

What do you believe the answer to the question should be?

Can you support your answer with documented evidence? (No, wikipedia will not count in this case).

The beauty of HomeSchool Advantage is that we can leverage our highly educated community to improve both our questions and our answers! We want to hear from you!!!

Hurried Memorization is a Hopeless Approach for Retaining Information

The title of this post is my favorite line from this interesting article about memorization and cramming:

At HomeSchool Advantage we have been saying for years that cramming (hurried memorization) is a terrible way to learn. We need a better way, and that way is Spaced Repetition. We used spaced repetition to:

• Ensure the students retain and recall information over the long term
• Save time and energy
• Engage the student without boring the student

Of course, we didn't make this up, we have been following for years and years active research in human cognition. We have incorporated this research into HomeSchoolAdvantage to help you supplement your homeschool curriculum and make your homeschool as effective as possible.

Visit HomeSchool Advantage today and try a 30 Day Free Trial. See what spaced repetition and many other advanced study techniques can do for you!

The Basics

The Basics are fundamental concepts and vocabulary in a subject that are referenced frequently in the continued study of that subject.

If a student does not know the basics then they may not really understand the meaning of more advanced concepts they are learning. If a student knows that Sudan is in the Northern Hemisphere but does not know the definition of the Northern Hemisphere then their knowledge is incomplete.

Many students fail to grasp a subject because they do not fully know the basics.

There are a lot of basics and most of us are missing thousands of them in each and every subject. HomeSchoolAdvantage was created to change that!

We have added two new basic courses today. The two new courses are:

110 - Earth Basics
Definitions of the Equator, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, and more!

450 - Periodic Table Basics
Definitions of Groups, Periods, and Atomic Number, and more!

We will continue to add more basics at each subject level.

Of course, if an older student is taking a 100 level basics course the student may already know many of them quite well. When this is the case, the student should simply delete the facts they already know. For example, if a student already knows that the convention for most maps is to put North at the top of the map the the student should delete that basics fact when it is encountered.

Deleting the 100 level basic fact a student already knows is preferable to skipping the 100 level basics entirely, because it is almost guaranteed that even advanced students will discover some lower level basics that they never learned or that they did not retain and cannot recall.

HomeSchool Advantage makes it possible to retain and recall it all.

-Tom

New Course: US Measures

How many feet in a mile? In a furlong?
How many cups in a gallon?
How many teaspoons in a tablespoon?
How many ounces in a pound?
How many pounds in a ton?

These are now almost uniquely United States questions as most of the rest of the world uses metric units of measure. Our new course introduces 19 common facts about US Units of Measure.

Subject: Science
Level: 200
Course Name: 210 - US Measures

It is listed as a 200 level course instead of a 100 level course mainly because of its use of larger numbers.

Of course, the course is free to members!

New Subject: Spanish

One of the most important tasks when mastering a new language is to learn vocabulary in that language. HomeSchoolAdvantage now helps you learn, retain, and recall Spanish vocabulary. We've added 300 Spanish words in a new Spanish subject. Because of our unique system, you can now learn, retain and recall the vocabulary for years to come!

This beats other systems hands down, where you learn new vocabulary and then promptly forget it!

We are a powerful supplement to your existing Spanish training.

There are new courses in the 100, 200, and 300 level and more will be added over the coming weeks. A second language is an advantage you should have. We provide it here to you at HomeSchoolAdvantage.

As always, these new courses are Free to Members.

Seas of the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean Sea is central to European, Middle East, and North Africian history.

Perhaps the names of gulfs, smaller seas, and straits in the Mediterranean might be worth learning? Knowing these names will certainly make reading other history a lot more interesting.

Our new course, 525 - Mediterranean Seas, contains 17 different names for Seas, Gulfs, and Straits in the Mediterranean. Of course, this new course is Free to Members.

Facts Matter

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
--Mark Twain

We have a feature in HomeSchool Advantage where a
student can send us a message about a fact. We hope
that students will use this feature if they ever believe a
fact we are reporting is in error. The students, of course,
are free to use the feature for other things, sometimes
just to say hello.

Yesterday, we received the following:

I thought that the Pacific ocean was the smallest ocean in the world. But I'm in 8th Grade and I thought I knew lots of things. Thank you for your efforts and teaching me things like the fact above.

Sincerely, AStudent.

Dear AStudent,

Thank you for letting us know that we are helping. We are excited to be a part of your education.

Our goal is to help you know, retain, and recall over 30,000 facts by the time you are graduated from HomeSchool.

Facts matter.

Knowing the difference between the world's largest and the world's smallest ocean matters.

In the future, when you hear of events, activities, and actions that occurred on these oceans you will be a better student. You will be a better student because you are bringing existing knowledge with you. This actually makes it easier to learn new things, it also makes it more fun.

I am not making this up.

Test me on it next year, the more facts you learn this year, the more fun it becomes to learn new facts next year!

Knowing facts helps you think. It helps you think creative new thoughts about what you are learning. Learning new facts, by reading and studying, is how you become a brilliant student.

No big secret really, but it is amazing how few people have learned this simple trick. Of course, you have to do more than just learn the new facts, you also have to be able to retain and recall them. That is where HomeSchool Advantage comes in, we help you retain and recall new facts for years.

Thank you for writing. And please feel free to drop us a note whenever you feel like it, we enjoy hearing from you.

-The HomeSchool Advantage Team

New Technical Support Phone Number

Do you want to reach us with a question, comment, or suggestion?

By email the best address is:

support@homeschooladvantage.com

To reach us by phone dial:

734.418.7111

This number routes to several differnt locations so let it ring up to twelve times! We look forward to hearing from you!

-Tom

NE Atlantic Gulfs, Seas, and Straits - New Course

Digging out again from another eight inches of snow. At least being shut in by the weather helps get new course out. Ive been adding new content on HomeSchool Advantage's premier subject - Geography. Our goal is to have 30,000 facts on all sorts of subjects, but to give you the idea of where we are going with the site we wanted to do at least one subject more fully from the start, and that subject is Geography.

Two reasons for this:

1. Geography is fun.
2. Americans are notoriously bad at Geography.

We are also using Geography to demonstrate that more you build your knowledge nets, the faster you retain new facts. A new geography knowledge net was added to HomeSchool Advantage today. If you have already learned your European countries these new facts will likely be learned very quickly. The new course is located in 500 level Geography.

520 - NE Atlantic
Gulfs, Seas and Straits

It contains wonderful color maps, making it easy to identify the gulfs, seas and straits of the region.

Can you find the Straits of Dover, the Baltic Sea, the Irish Sea? How about the Celtic Sea and the Bay of Biscay?

Fifteen different NE Atlantic bodies of water are included in this course. Time to round out your knowledge of the seas of the NE Atlantic. Learning them will make European history, world news, and current events more interesting and engaging.

Of course, as always, the course is Free to Members.

Australia States and Capitals - New Course

As I look out the window and see snow, I can't help but think that really we should move our HomeSchoolAdvantage headquarters to Australia for at least part of the year.

I have Australia in my mind, because we have just added a new course on Australian States, Territories, and Capitals. It is a relatively short course that does not contain the smaller Australian territorial islands. For the larger Australian States and Territories, native English speakers will find the names familiar and easy to , so we also encourage students in the United States to add this content to their existing Geography studies. It is located in the 400 level column under Oceania.

430 - Australia
States and Capitals

Of course, as always, the course is Free to Members. Australian residents (and others) may elect to assign this course at a younger age. For much of Geography that concerns itself entirely with the names of places and things, the distribution across levels is to distribute the work over time. It does not represent any inherent difficulty in the material.