Why Teachers Don’t Go In Depth (And What You Can Do at Home)
On a Thursday afternoon, I was explaining the Louisiana Purchase to my seventh-grade class. We had already spent the entire period on the causes and the basic deal—the price, the size, the fact that it doubled the country. I had about twenty minutes left before the bell, and we still needed to touch on Lewis and Clark, the impact on Native tribes, and then finish a worksheet with three comprehension questions.
A boy in the third row raised his hand. “But why did France even own that land?” he asked. “And why were they so willing to sell it?”
I looked at the clock. Then I gave the answer that breaks kids’ curiosity into little pieces: “Good question. We don’t have time to get into that right now, but you can look it up later.”
He put his hand down. The moment passed. We moved on to the map activity.
That scene plays out in classrooms across the country every single day. And as a teacher, I hate it just as much as you might expect. I’d love nothing more than to spend a whole week on the Louisiana Purchase—to talk about the Haitian revolution making Napoleon desperate for cash, or the debates over whether the Constitution even allowed such a purchase, or the fact that the land wasn’t exactly “empty,” despite how the old textbooks phrased it. But I can’t. The pacing guide says I have three days, not seven.
This is the real answer to the question “Why do teachers not go in depth?” It’s not that we don’t want to. It’s that the system we work in is built for breadth over depth.
Here’s what that actually looks like in practice. My district uses a curriculum that lists specific standards for each grade level. For social studies, I’m responsible for teaching everything from early European exploration to the Civil War in about 180 days. That means I have to cover a major event every few days. There’s no way to go deep on each one. So I make a choice: do I teach the American Revolution as a complex, contradictory conflict with economic nuances and loyalist perspectives, or do I make sure every kid knows the Treaty of Paris and who wrote the Declaration of Independence? I choose the latter, because that’s what the test measures.
And testing is the other pressure. At the end of the year, there’s a state exam. It covers all the same standards. It asks questions about vocabulary, dates, and key people. It doesn’t ask kids to explain the intricacies of Napoleon’s military failures. So I spend my time making sure students have committed the surface-level facts to memory. That’s the definition of shallow teaching, and I’m embarrassed by it sometimes. But it’s the only way to get through the material without failing them on the test.
It’s not just social studies, either. In math, I’ve had to skip the conceptual “why” behind algorithms because we need to move to the next topic by Friday. In science, we read about ecosystems in thirty minutes instead of observing the schoolyard for a week. There’s always another unit waiting, and the clock never stops.
Now, I want to say this clearly: there are good teachers who manage to sneak in depth. They create extension activities, offer enrichment, and let kids pursue questions on the side. But even those teachers have limits. Grading stacks of essays takes time. Managing 34 students with different reading levels takes energy. When you’ve just finished a class where three kids were fighting, one was zoning out, and two others were crying because they forgot their project, you’re not going to spend your planning period designing an immersive simulation of the Constitutional Convention. You’re going to print out a worksheet and pray that everyone gets the main idea.
So if you’re a parent, I know this might sound discouraging. But there’s an important flip side: the things I can’t do during the school day, you can absolutely do at home. And you don’t need to be a historian or a scientist to make it happen.
The first step is simple: ask your child’s teacher what they’re actually skipping. Most teachers are happy to tell you. Something like, “We’re covering the Civil War next week, but I know we’ll only touch on the key battles. Is there anything you wish you had time for?” You might get an answer like, “Oh, I always wish we could read more primary sources from soldiers’ letters.” That’s your opening. Then you can find one or two of those letters online and read them together at the kitchen table.
Another practical thing: encourage your kid to ask the “why” question at home. When they come home with a half-baked understanding of a science concept, instead of letting it die, ask them “What doesn’t make sense?” or “What do you think might be a bigger story behind this?” If your child learned that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, ask “Why do you think the colonists used that specific date?” You’re not teaching the material—you’re just keeping the curiosity alive. That’s something no pacing guide can stop.
There’s also the resource angle. Teachers often know great books, documentaries, or podcasts, but we don’t have time to incorporate them into class. In an email, you can directly ask: “My child got really interested in the Louisiana Purchase after that brief lesson. Do you have any recommendations for a deeper dive?” Most teachers will send back a list within a day. We’re thrilled when a student cares enough to go further. We just can’t be the ones to lead that charge during our twenty minutes of instructional time.
One thing I’ve learned is that depth doesn’t have to happen in a formal, structured way. It can be a dinner table conversation that lasts ten minutes. It can be a library book that your kid flips through before bed. It can be a documentary you pick to watch on a Sunday afternoon that happens to match the current school unit. The point isn’t to recreate a rigorous seminar at home. The point is to show your child that there’s always more to the story—even if their teacher couldn’t tell it all.
Last year, after that Louisiana Purchase lesson, I felt so guilty about brushing off the boy’s question that I brought in a short video clip the next day. It was about Napoleon and the slave rebellion in Haiti. I showed it during the last five minutes of class. The same boy raised his hand afterward, not to ask a question, but to say, “That’s why he sold it. He needed money.” It was a tiny moment, but it made the difference. Not every lesson can have that, but I try to leave at least one thread hanging each week—a question I don’t answer, a detail I mention but don’t explain.
That’s not the ideal way to teach, and I’m not pretending it is. The ideal way would be smaller classes, fewer standards, and a curriculum that values curiosity over coverage. Until that changes, teachers will keep making these trade-offs. But parents can be the safety net. You can pick up the threads we drop. You can let your child ask the questions we have to postpone. And in your kitchen, there’s no bell, no test, and no pacing guide—just time to go as deep as you both want.
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