(Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection - Editor's Notes by Christina Myer)

I took a friend on a little adventure this weekend. I’d been promising her I’d find a restaurant that served food like what she was used to back home, and the opportunity finally presented itself. So we found ourselves in a traditional German beer tavern a couple of hours away from here and I was instantly in love with the building.

It was the kind of old that puts a little wave into the hardwood floors and forces restaurants to put in “Watch your step” signs. Lots of exposed beams and old bricks. It was adorable.

So, I asked the waitress to tell me about the history of the building. (People who travel with me know I’m going to ask a lot of questions. I can’t turn it off.)

She started telling me stories about ghost encounters/sightings. In the middle of a tale about a levitating fire poker, I said “No, I mean the actual history.”

She looked surprised, but recovered. She explained that it was more than 200 years old, and talked about its various purposes over the generations.

My friend was finishing her food and declaring it “legit.” I hadn’t started yet.

Once the waitress got to the part where she thought she needed to tell me who “Mad” Anthony Wayne was, I stopped her and explained that I had grown up close enough to the restaurant that I was familiar with people like Wayne, Ebenezer Zane and Baron Von Steuben because my teachers had leaned heavily on those topics in school.

I said that to her in a way I expected her to relate to. I was waiting for something along the lines of “Oh, yeah, my teachers did that, too.”

What I got was a couple of blinks before she said it sounded similar to the way her teachers had leaned heavily into teaching about 9/11.

Oh.

Yep, that’s the kind of thing that will bring you back to reality pretty quick and make you start looking for senior discounts on the menu.

My friend cheerfully said “That’s how it was for us with the wars.” The waitress blinked again. “We lost them both,” my friend said.

At that point, the poor waitress just giggled nervously and stopped letting us keep her from her work.

But it got me thinking about how vastly different social studies and history education is from one generation — and one country — to the next. You have to show a lot of initiative even to understand how much you don’t know.

I’m glad one thing hasn’t changed, then. This past week was the 2026 West Virginia Social Studies Fair, in Charleston. That’s an event I participated in as a student, and it seems as though it is still going strong. It encourages students to ask questions and explore on their own — and to learn something that might not be part of the day-to-day curriculum.

“You’ll see a project with a third grader, and then down the row is a senior in high school, and they’re all here for the same reason,” state Department of Education Social Studies Coordinator Matt Kelly told WV MetroNews. “They got to pursue their passion and something they care a lot about, learn something along the way and have some fun.”

West Virginia Department of Education English-Language Arts Grades 6-12 Coordinator Susie Garrison, who was a judge for the fair, told MetroNews she was struck by the diversity of topics students chose to dive into.

Good. Because someday, in what will feel like a thousand years from now, they might be asked a question by someone whose curiosity has been sparked and have to dig deep into their well of knowledge and experience to stay part of the conversation, as that waitress did. (And she did so beautifully.)

Because of the work being done by our social studies and history teachers (as long as we can keep lawmakers out of their hair), and events such as the social studies fair, they’ll be able. That’s even more comforting than a dish of spaetzle and pork schnitzel.

Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com