Fifty Nifty United States....I mean Fifty One Nifty One United States and some Territories and stuff

Last week another teacher came to our class to give a lesson about the Flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, and all that jazz. This is a common practice at my school, we call them rotations. So the children are sitting on the rug and the teacher is reading to them a picture book about the Flag and what it stands for. She gets to the part about the stars and reads from the book that the stars represent the 50 States of America. Normal, nothing out of the ordinary in that. Then she looks at the students and says something to the effect "Sorry, my book is a little old, there are now 51 States" and continues on her merry way with the lesson.

For the next two minutes and 18 seconds I rifled through all the history, civics, and new reports I'd ever seen or heard. Nothing pulled up on this google search of my mind. I was stumped.

When the kids were all coloring their little flags I asked her what state it was. She told me it was DC. Huh? I responded by saying "Isn't that kinda like a territory, and not a State?" She responded "No, Cuba is a territory..." at that point my brain completely shut down and refused to reboot.

Today we were discussing it again (by 'we' I mean the teacher I TA for and a parent) and talking about how funny that was. Again I heard Cuba was a territory. This statement brings up many questions:

Pardon me, since when did Fidel Castro allow his country to be civil with the US? If it's a territory why do we send back the inflatable rafts of people? Shouldn't we have open trade with our territories?

So, in case anybody was wondering, or confused, Cuba is a territory according to Small City School District. And don't you forget it!