Getting serious with the world.

It's not uncommon for Latin Americans to have up to 15 family members, across generations, living under one roof, according to Martin Davis, a senior writer/ editor at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

But most American students are not learning this in school, Davis says, and the reason may lie in that two-thirds of states don't maintain adequate standards for instructing world history, specifically Latin American history, according to the institute's recent report, The State of State World History Standards 2006.

Davis explains this is disheartening in part because, "economically, Latin America is becoming huge." "For example, two of the three largest exports of oil that the U.S. gets come from Venezuela and Mexico. And Venezuela is in the hands of a dictator who is not friendly to the U.S. We should care."

Some states aced it, including California, Massachusetts and Virginia having A scores, while other states "bombed it,"--Alaska, Idaho, Missouri and Montana.

"The California curriculum in world history is possibly the best in the nation," says Diane Ravitch, who helped write the standards for the state. Ravitch explains that California requires three years of world history. "In each case, [students] learn about relationships among different nations and cultures," she says. "The focus is history but it is correlated with geography, science, technology and literature."

States that are serious about world history can:

* Rewrite standards with those from A-rated states;

* Require students pass a test in world history to graduate or include history testing as part of the school accountability system;

* Build high school history around the AP syllabus.