Review
PAC World Geography is a comprehensive geography curriculum that covers the six basic geographic regions of the world: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceana (Australia and Pacific islands). Completing this course will give students a thorough overview of the peoples, cultures, geographic regions, and historical context of the countries of the world.
PAC World Geography covers fifteen topics for each region: borders, terrain, water, climate, vegetation and wildlife, famous sites and events, ethnicities, languages, religions, transportation, government, diplomacy, economics, natural resources, and industry, including exports.
Accompanying each of the six softcover texts is a consumable activity book that includes maps, fill-in-the blank, and multiple choice questions designed to reinforce and explore the information from the text; think of it as homework. Included with the package is a Teacher’s Resource Kit that includes quizzes, tests and answers for the student activities workbooks, as well as a CD-Rom which contains digital duplicates of some of the materials included in the package.
I like the content of PAC World Geography. A student who reads the texts and completes the student activities workbook will learn a great deal about the world. I did find it difficult to understand the logistics of how the curriculum worked at first. To put it into geographic terms, I really wished that I had a map to figure it out!
- The Teacher’s Resource Kit could benefit from a section that explains how the whole curriculum ties together, with tips on how to use it effectively and a suggested daily lesson plan.
- It is not easy to identify what is actually taught in the course, since course content is not listed anywhere. You have to flip through each book to identify the subject, whereas a handy Table of Contents would simplify that.
- We discovered the quizzes in the Teacher Resource Manual kind of accidentally, because there was no instruction in the textbook that it was time to take the quiz.
- The curriculum is hard to store, and it would be easy to misplace one of the 13 components; some students might prefer one large hardcover textbook.
- The quizzes and tests were difficult, and the scores wouldn’t necessarily give a good indication of the overall learning of the student, i.e. tests required students to recall inspirational quotes from the text that were not geography or contextually related to the section.
These are small, but frustrating, things that might affect the student’s enjoyment of the program. You might encourage your student to complete the open book student activities to reinforce retention of the material contained in the text, but not rely on test scores to indicate mastery of the material.
Overall, I think the content for PAC World Geography is essential information for all high school students to learn, and even though the information is comprehensive and thorough — when traveling around the world in eighty days, I would prefer to pack lightly and carry a good map!
About the Reviewer
From the publisher’s website: Ronald E. Johnson, C. Ph.D. graduated from the University of Arizona with three degrees: BA, M.Ed. and Ed. S. in school administration. Dr. Johnson’s career as a teacher and school administrator includes innovative, individualized learning techniques, articles, books, manuals, international recognition and awards. Dr. Johnson founded four charter schools for father-challenged teenagers. He also set up Triage Recovery Academies, a program that trains educational entrepreneurs to own and operate one-room, individualized high schools for recovering father-challenged and fatherless teenagers through schools located in shopping malls, churches, industrial sites, and public and private schools. Dr. Johnson has authored a dozen books on parenting and educational topics. He and his wife live on a small ranch in central Texas.
From the publisher’s website: The mission of Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum (PAC) is to train educational entrepreneurs and parents to provide for students an accelerated learning system and principle-based core curriculum specifically designed to address the character, academics and emotional needs of students who have been under-served or have underperformed in conventional classrooms. Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum publishes textbooks designed with virtues and principles selected to compensate for the lack of training by absentee fathers.
The review of Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum World Geography by Mrs. Popejoy was appreciated. Most of her comments were appropriate. We have corrected the omission of instructions about when to complete quizzes. We had outsourced part of the course production, and the service provider omitted instructions which all of our other courses include. We thank Mrs. Popejoy for bringing that to our attention. It is being corrected for future prints. Regarding her comments about not understanding how the components fit together for home application, detailed instructions are available in our catalog and on our website. Her comment is the first we have received from our long list of satisfied parents and students. However, we have arranged to include print instructions from the catalog in future kits shipped to families. Mrs. Popejoy also suggested that some students might prefer a thick hardbound text. Paradigm provides courses in single, soft cover chapters with companion student study books in order to allow students to “digest” courses in small bite-size chapters (rather than lug around a heavy, intimidating book).
Mr. Johnson, thank you for commenting on the review. I am so glad that you and the publishers are so quick to respond to users! In researching the product on the website, I must have missed the detailed instructions about how to use the product, so I know that it will be a great help to include those instructions in the kits.
Speaking as a busy homeschool mom, I can use all the help I can get that will make a curriculum easy to understand, easy to plan into the schedule, and easy to assign to my children. It can make a ‘world’ of difference! Thank you for such a comprehensive curriculum.