Sen. Hillary Clinton does not think 4-year old city head-starters know a swamp from a dam, river, or valley. She says that the kids have never seen a swamp so they can not possibly know what one is.
First, when I was 4, I had never seen a swamp, but I could have darn well at least known it was not a dam, river, or valley! And that is without Head Start. As far as I know I have still never been to a swamp, maybe a bog or two, but nothing officially called a swamp.
Second, there is a whole hell of a lot of things I have never actually seen in person. However I could identify a lot of the world if given a set of four pictures of relatively different things.
How is this possible? Humans can learn! If one of the goals of head start is to teach kids about land types, then why is it wrong to test them on it?