Those History and Social Studies Learning Standards: Another Perspective
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76 responses to “Those History and Social Studies Learning Standards: Another Perspective”
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You appear to be have concerns about teaching historical facts to students without ascribing guilt to any population in the classroom.
Will you please tell us which population(s) in the classroom you think should have guilt ascribed to them?
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Let me give you a story that illustrates what concerns me. In September I was visiting a relative and another person present was a sixth grader in that local school system. The discussion involved 9-11, not sure why. “I don’t like firefighters” the sixth grader blurted out. Really, we asked, why not? “My teacher told us how firefighters used their hoses on Dr. Martin Luther King to attack him and his followers. I don’t like firefighters.” Now, I doubt the teacher intended to impugn an entire class of dedicated first responders living 60 years later, but that was the effect, intended or not. Anybody else than me not okay with that?
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Do you really think the teacher wanted/expected kids to decide they don’t like firefighters based on that story? How do we share the facts without someone responding differently than we expect or negatively?
Isn’t the bottom line that MLK experienced the law enforcement/leadership opposing his message/demands? Recently citizens in multiple jurisdictions who oppose new fossil fuel facilities have been met by local police as well as the companies building them. Today many discuss the way that government supports big business and undermines its citizens who disagree with the business actions.
How do we avoid this while still having discussion about facts? How do we avoid some taking the “wrong” message? Teachers can try to recognize when it happens and attempt to set things right, but it will be hard to catch it every time and harder to fix it.
I don’t like it that a child interpreted as they did, but I honestly don’t know how we can always avoid it if we want to have the discussion about difficult topics like situations when government opposes its citizens’ rights in support of big business or different philosophy or… Truth is, it happens.
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Or my doubts aside, a social justice warrior intentionally warped the kids. This is why parents really need to be paying attention and pushing back. And why people like you are the new folks trying to block the schoolhouse doors….
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Could the problem be that the sixth grade (or earlier) is too early to be teaching or illustrating concepts like that? Their young brains just don’t have enough context to process it regardless of teacher intentions.
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Novel concept, there has been great pushback on teaching of topics to young children right here on this blog, that most would believe to be common sense.
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Okay. So is this a REASON to NOT address it in the content?
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You really believe that most teachers are social justice warriors who intentionally warp kids? I don’t think there are many.
Me blocking schoolhouse doors? How? No. That’s not what I’m saying at all.
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Do you really think the teacher wanted/expected kids to decide they don’t like firefighters based on that story?
He states right in his post that he does not think that…
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But I cannot rule it out.
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True enough. But I agree with you in that I doubt it was the teacher’s intent.
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It seems to me that if you are talking about slavery or Americans breaking treaties with Indians or displacing Indians and making them walk 1,000 miles to Oklahoma, you are implicitly blaming white Americans. The guidelines said guilt should not be ascribed to “populations”; they do not address “individuals” in the classroom.
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My 5th great grandmother had her property seized by the new state of Pennsylvania because her late husband was in a Loyalist unit during the Revolution. He didn’t get to do much fighting as he was a messenger and died of smallpox. She had to get whatever personal property she had and 7 kids to the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec. A good 900 miles plus.
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And if you ask who rounded up the enslaved people in core Africa to sell them to the slave traders the answer is Black Africans.
And if you ask who kick started the European slave trade the answer is a White woman (Queen Elizabeth I, after who our state is named).
And if you ask which country in the Western Hemisphere was the last to outlaw slavery the answer is hispanic – run Brazil (accepting Portuguese as hispanic).
And if you ask who constitutes the vast majority of law breaking street gangs in the US today the answer is Black and Hispanic young men.
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and if you ask what happened to the Jews in WWII?
or the Native Americans?
or the Japanese Americans?
and those killed in Red Summer or Tulsa ?
do you not talk of this history?
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The Jews in WWII – imprisoned and killed by White men. Liberated by White men, including many who gave their lives fighting the Nazis.
Native Americans? Killed in droves by other Native Americans over the millennia Also killed in droves by White European settlers.
Japanese Americans? Imprisoned by order of a liberal Democratic born-rich White man who is today revered by the left. Why is that racist ass-clown’s picture still on the dime?
Teach all the history, Larry …
“As I’ve pointed out previously, prominent scientists now deride depictions of pre-state people as peaceful. “Contra leftist anthropologists who celebrate the noble savage,” the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in 2007, “quantitative body countsโsuch as the proportion of prehistoric skeletons with ax marks and embedded arrowheads or the proportion of men in a contemporary foraging tribe who die at the hands of other menโsuggest that pre-state societies were far more violent than our own.” According to Pinker, the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes “got it right” when he called pre-state life a “war of all against all.”
In other words, Native American tribes were murderous, genocidal groups who wiped out other tribes until they met a murderous, genocidal group (White Europeans) with better technology who beat them.
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Seems certain youโve never read about the Haudenosaunee or the Great Peace originated by eastern Native Americans. Ben Franklin (I recall) commented that the Constitution adopted principles from these sources.
However, the curriculum you describe will make the script for many frontier westerns to justify the Trail of Tears and broken treaties.
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Teaching all of it – I agree. Depicting the US as “better” at being murderous and genocidal is not exactly what we claim are our “principles” that set us apart and better than others.
It’s one thing to best them at that time in the past. What justifies decades of bad treatment after?
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And when they came for me, there was no one to speak in my behalf.
The guidelines say “any population in the classroom”. There is no population of old, dead, white people in today’s classrooms.
The current population of white students (and several generations prior) is not in any way guilty of the terrible human rights violations you mentioned.
They should not be made to feel guilty, as a population, for things some of their great-great-great grandparents may have done.
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How can we discuss what happened, avoiding anyone concluding that guilt is being assigned? Does simply addressing the facts automatically lead to assumption that guilt is assigned? How do we get from discussion of the facts without any individual involved feeling guilt? Is that even possible?
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Assign blame to those who are guilty of the transgressions – old, dead, [mostly] white men who lived in the distant past. Assure all students that no one is assigning blame to anyone now living, including them.
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You’re not dealing in facts though, you’re blaming old dead white dudes for taking land from Native Americans who took that land by force from other Native Americans.
None of it was right, but that’s how societies are built and developed.
You’re illustrating the downfalls of “presentism”.
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Guilt need not be the objective. The persistent question is responsibility and whether there exists residuals.
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guilt is a reaction to historical facts…
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Iโve re-read the piece several times and do not see the author advocating ascribing guilt to any population. The author in a side note adverted to the danger of introducing guilt into the classroom – not a command or suggestion to do so.
This is the most thoughtful challenge I’ve seen to Youngkin’s proposals — far better than anything I’ve read in the mainstream media. The contradictions and issues that Dick raises here are serious, not frivolous. They demand a response.
(Ankle-biters take notice. This is how you need to engage with people you disagree with.)
I’ll give it some thought as to how I might respond to the issues Dick presents. For now I’ll make one observation: There is an interesting asymmetry at work.
The advocates of woke ideology never worried about maintaining objectivity in the classroom. The entire thrust of the administration and its allies in “progressive” school districts was turn turn schools into social-justice factories. If someone called them out on their ideological bias, they would have said, “Yeah, what of it? We’re right, we’re on the side of truth and goodness. We are trying to change society.”
But when a conservative administration wants to do away with woke dogmatism and strive for balance and objectivity, it gets called out for not living up to its own standards.
I would distinguish between two levels of analysis: The first is the level of state-level policy, the other is classroom-level policy. Different criteria apply to the two levels. It is OK to be animated by conservative principles in the formulation of policy. It is not OK to treat those principles as a new dogma in the classroom.
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Not arguing with your comment about the intentions of the progressive educational machine, but isn’t Dick’s point that Youngkin’s proposal is attempting to do the same thing. It’s not “balance and objectivity”, it’s just a different kind of bias?
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Substituting woke conservatism for woke progressivism is not a solution only a culture war salvo. Agree that it is not OK to treat those principles as a new dogma in the classroom. I fear compromise by the embattled sides is not possible.
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It is unfortunate that we no longer have the previous version to compare side-by-side. I suspect that there might have been plenty in that version that would have put teachers in an “untenable” position. There is not 100% agreement among scholars even in the “hard” sciences and certainly not in History and Civics. Exactly what should be taught, and how, and what should not be taught and at what grade level is for the electorate to hammer out, and for forums such as this to make a contribution to the debate.
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so much for “transparency”, eh?
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Dick’s nuclear bomb example…what a perfect example of why these topics are so fraught. In an upper level ethics course, especially at the college level, that is a wonderful case study. In a middle or high school history class, the kids need to know that the U.S. dropped the two bombs that persuaded the Japanese leadership to finally admit their defeat (which was sealed earlier that year.) And if it prevented a million U.S. casualties, it also prevented 5 million Japanese casualties (see the mass Japanese civilian suicides in the earlier island campaigns.) You don’t need to be trying to paint Truman and the USAAF (a.k.a. my father’s friends) as war criminals, which I am confident many now teaching would love to do. Perfect example, Dick. Debating, questioning the decision is not history class, it is an effort to impose a moral judgement.
The scholars who decry the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki have forgotten how Japan’s democide resulted in nearly 6 million deaths.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM
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They’ve not studied how the Japanese treated the people of the Philippines.
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Or the prisoners of war at Bataan. Or the sailors and Marines on the Arizona.
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or the folks at Mแปน Lai massacre or wounded knee or the trail of tears or Birmingham?
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We are on Chapter 17 Mr. Larry. Chapter 21 is down the road.
https://icomets.org/ush-textbook/ch17.pdf -
Ah… Japanese interment camps?
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I agree. It’s time to get that rich racist White man, FD Roosevelt, off the dime. Strike a blow for anti-racism – bring back the liberty dime.
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Ah…the 442nd Combat Team? The Nazis were terrified of these awesome bunker busters.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/07db958bda2df901d30303323dd0e72fec022312f32d6f12dd0e4c5202c67e49.jpg
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Or the prisoners of war at Bataan. Or the sailors and Marines on the Arizona.
Uh yep. Hiroshima yes. Nagasaki, meh… It took Bush three days to mount the wreckage of the WTC, and that was 2001.
Three days was not enough. Seven would have saved 100,000 civilians and still would have resulted in an unconditional surrender.
Remember, in December 1941 it took us 4 days to declare war and it was a foregone conclusion by 1 PM EST on the 7th.
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They didn’t need it. They had the real thing.
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Nicely done.
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On December 7th Nimitz was serving as president of the Army Navy Country Club. Husband Kimmel commanded at Pearl on that fateful day.
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“Three days was not enough. Seven would have saved 100,000 civilians and still would have resulted in an unconditional surrender.โ
Seriously. What soothsayer did you get that from?
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Insert the word “probably”. But you’re the expert (on everything) so how long did it take Pearl to provide the President the full BDA in ’41.
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Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech was delivered on Dec 8, 1941 – one day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
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Right, but when did he have KIA, WIA, civilians killed, ships sunk, damaged, etc.
Bush didn’t give his “run but not hide” until 3 days later, and he had the benefit of CNN.
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It would just be better all the way around to eliminate the study of History for those in grades 1 to 8 and concentrate on math skills, writing, English, and a second language, preferably one allowing control of, and interface with, computers.
Or, just play Trivial Pursuit…
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That might not be a bad idea the putting off of teaching real history until later grades, not the playing of trivial pursuit).
I’ve never heard anyone else make that suggestion, but I think it has some merit.
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The problem is that in grades 1-8 the watered down “history” is competing with Marvel, DC, Disney, etc., and because it is watered down it’s not very good at dispelling the myths and legends.
By the time kids begin to seriously study and question the historical record, they’ve accepted the legends.
Better to tell an 8-yo that movies are entertainment and when they’re 16 they’ll learn to drive and buy a slave.
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This topic quickly slides into competing over whose ancestors suffered – or acted – the worst. This is fruitless, and feeds the tendency of kids (and textbook writers) to see the world as good guys vs. bad guys. This is a bad mindset for college, or voting, or all human relations.
Show kids that history is complex and tragic, and it needs evidence. And then, we may even change our minds, even without cancelling anyone. What a concept.
So, what to do? (1) Kill off the textbooks (2) and replace them with shorter works showing different views of a single problem, e.g. “causes of the Civil War.” About the students’ final judgments about winners and losers: who cares? Focus on their logic, and how fairly they represent opposing views. (3) Encourage student debate not just as fun acting out, but for demonstrated reason and balance. (4) Teach them how to write an argument based on evidence. (5) Let them memorize from some classic short pieces: Lincoln (Gettysburg Address), Frederick Douglass (What to the Slave is the 4th of July?), M.L. King (Letter From Birmingham Jail), Ronald Reagan (at Brandenburg Gate), Churchill (Finest Hour), Pericles (Funeral Oration). Watch their performance zoom.
As for WayneS asking “which population(s) in the classroom you think should have guilt ascribed to them?”
The School Board, of course. ๐
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I’d add George Washington’s farewell address to your list in item #5.
Otherwise I think you hit the nail on the head.
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Over the weekend I saw “The U.S. Constitution and Other American Writings” at Costco.
I believe it had Gen. Washington’s farewell as well as JFK’s inaugural and many more.
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Dick’s nuclear bomb example…what a perfect example of why these topics are so fraught. In an upper level ethics course, especially at the college level, that is a wonderful case study. In a middle or high school history class, the kids need to know that the U.S. dropped the two bombs that persuaded the Japanese leadership to finally admit their defeat (which was sealed earlier that year.) And if it prevented a million U.S. casualties, it also prevented 5 million Japanese casualties (see the mass Japanese civilian suicides in the earlier island campaigns.) You don’t need to be trying to paint Truman and the USAAF (a.k.a. my father’s friends) as war criminals, which I am confident many now teaching would love to do. Perfect example, Dick. Debating, questioning the decision is not history class, it is an effort to impose a moral judgement.
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My moral judgement is that 3 days between the bombings was insufficient to have received a response. How many days after 9-11-2001 did it take us to tell Afghanistan we were coming?
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My moral judgement is that 3 days between the bombings was insufficient to have received a response.
I tend to agree with you on that. Hiroshima was necessary. Nagasaki could have been put off until we knew for certain that it was necessary (or not).
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Hey, I get it though. It’s war. It’s a massive unethical bloodletting. But, the 3 days was not enough was being argued at the time. It wasn’t just dreamed up in the 1960’s.
Nevertheless, post war is exactly the time to do “lessons learned” and annotate history. Otherwise, you wind up with statues of the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
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That’s because they never learned about Operation Downfall and it’s theoretical causality rate of 100%.
Which if having occurred myself and a plethora of others would not exist as our ancestries were slated to be a part of it.
I’m not so sure that all of the hand wringing about the original version of the standards or the revised version is warranted. First of all, when the teacher closes the door, many intentions from Richmond flies out the window. There will be lefty teachers who will tell the stories their ways, and conservative teachers who will tell the other side of the stories regardless of the direction handed down from on high. The good thing about it is that the vast majority of our teachers are very level headed and will try to tread lightly down the middle. The vast majority of our teachers go to work every day to teach, not to indoctrinate. For those on the fringe who feel it’s their mission to push a specific agenda (either way), nothing written in the Curriculum Frameworks will prevent their proselytizing.
Now, all of this may be a different story in the not to distant future. Our teacher vacancies were pretty bad in October of 2021, and the recent JLARC report stated this problem is worse this year. When we have to place robots in the classrooms because we can’t entice humans to teach our kids, then whoever can get the votes can program these “teachers” to say exactly what they want them to say.
https://s35691.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/i-am-not-a-robot-091619.jpg
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Thanks. You have confirmed what I always assumed. This proposal does concern me, however: “The curriculum selected by a local school board should provide a level of
consistency and comprehension, so that ‘teacher-created curriculum’ is unnecessary.” I do understand that different teachers can, and will, teach the same curriculum differently, but I wonder how much detail will be in the curriculum guidelines, which will be developed separately from the Standards, and how closely school boards will hew to those guidelines and enforce them.-
If I’m not mistaken, the Tennessee legislature did pretty much outlaw teachers from using unapproved materials (even teacher created) in at least one content area (English?). It’s one thing to provide materials so that teachers don’t have to come up with their own. It’s another thing to ban them from using anything other than those which have been approved.
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โFraught with contradictionsโ you say.
“The lady gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.โ (line from one dead white guy written by another.)
You wrote:
โCentralized government planning in the form of socialism or communist political systems is incompatible with democracy and individual freedoms.โ
and discounts the governmental systems of allies.
I disagree. Every dictionary links central planning to economics. From Investopedia:
“A centrally planned economy, also known as a command economy, is an economic system where a government body makes economic decisions regarding the production and distribution of goods.
Centrally planned economies are different from market economies, where these decisions are the result of thousands of choices by producers and consumers.”
Our allies who have socialist governments donโt have command economies. No five year plans. They collect a lot of taxes to fund socialist projects, but they depend upon capitalism to generate those taxes. Sweden, for example, has a more lightly regulated economy than we do.
As for the rest of it, do you honestly think that any of what you wrote about will keep a teacher from teaching historical facts?
You have built straw man conflicts where none exist.
– Gettysburg Address? Are you insinuating that is controversial?
– I have a dream speech? I insist on it.
– City on a Hill. Certainly.
– Trail of tears? Terrible injustice. I was taught about that in the 50โs.
– Segregation and slavery? Always and everywhere wrong.
– Bombing Japan? The verdict of history is that it saved both Japanese and American lives. If a history teacher wants to introduce that there are dissenters in that view, do it.
I donโt even need to ask. I will tell you that the Youngkin administration has the same opinions on those issues that I do.
From you:
“Another โfoundational principleโ that incorporates conservative political bias is: โAmerica is exceptional but not perfect.โ โAmerican exceptionalismโ has long been a component of conservative thought. But the concept has had its critics and been challenged. In addition, some argue that, to the extent that it existed, the foundations of American exceptionalism are now eroding. This โfoundational principleโ has overtones of โMake America Great Again.โ
American exceptionalism as a historical fact is perfectly descriptive of reality. Mistakes – we have made a lot.
But America is the most exceptional democracy ever to exist. Our Constitution is the most copied. Ours is both the richest and most generous nation on earth. No politics in that. Just facts.
I, and I guarantee the Governor, will absolutely agree with you that American exceptionalism is now eroding. Fighting to maintain that exceptionalism is why center-right blogs exist.
Progressives work every waking hour to erode it. They take it on directly by describing merit as oppression. I have to believe after reading this that you may feel that way yourself.
Connecting โAmerican exceptionalismโ to MAGA is disgraceful, and perfectly representative of progressive slime.
Your article is a target-rich environment. Hope I did not miss anything.
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DH-S vs Youngkin/Sherlock. The winner to determine the fate of American exceptionalism. The thing is eroding due to the efforts of – hold your breath – progressives by slimy characterizations of exceptionalism to MAGA. Who woulda thunk?
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Perfect. I rest my case.
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Just thought a brief abstract to be more comprehensible than a bloviating screed. You are welcome.
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William F. Sherlock?
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WFB oopsed in the 60s when he proclaimed white supremacy an American value – exceptional. Sherlock is far more opaque and far less erudite but loquacious nonetheless.
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” bloviating screed” – nailed it!
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Taxes? Did you say, “taxes?”
How many 18-yo HS grads know that Jefferson wrote the DoI? 80%? 90%.
How many know what a 1040 is? Or, more importantly for today’s kids, what a 1099 is, or how if you’re a 1099 employee, to pay your SSA and Medicare?
Better we should spend a year on taxes than trivia.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zoez2P50lzo
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Lol. Now that history can’t be used as anti-American indoctrination liberal Nancy doesn’t see the value in teaching it.
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Never saw any value in it. Sin^2 + Cos^2 = 1 over my life time bought me a nice car or maybe a house, but knowing that Robert E. Lee is a venerated slaver in Virginia has paid me squat, and brought only strife.
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It ainโt over till itโs over! Woke conservatism has jumped the musket.
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This is an enlightening piece by Mr. Dick Hall-Sizemore. But left unsaid both in his piece and in the comments is how – exactly – the
new Standards of Learning for History and Social Studies came to be.
Here’s what the American Historical Association had to say about what Mr, Dick calls the “Standards developed by the previous Board of Education that were ready for consideration and adoption”:
โข “The American Historical Association (AHA) supports the process of revising the standards of learning for history and social science that you have undertaken in Virginia starting in 2021 and commends the draft standards that the Board of Education considered at its August meeting. The AHA strongly urges the board to proceed with adoption of these standards, which would offer Virginia students a strong foundation in historical study and prepare students to be informed citizens and lifelong learners across disciplines.”
โข “The draft standards align with the AHAโs Criteria for Standards in History/Social Studies/Social Sciences, which were developed and updated with detailed input from historians and Kโ12 educators. The Virginia standards process in 2021โ22 drew upon extensive contributions and rounds of revision from an impressive range of teachers and educators, parents, students, and subject matter experts. The proposed standards suitably incorporate the practices of historical interpretation, understanding historical context, and critical thinking. The results are robust and should be a point of pride for the board and the secretary, as well as for the hundreds of other Virginians who contributed to them.”
The Youngkin administration TRASHED those standards and replaced them with standards of their own, standards that Mr. Dick says are chock full of “contradictions” and replete with conservative political bias.” This was – of course – emphatically purposeful on the part of Youngkin.
The AHA endorsement of “Standards developed by the previous Board of Education” also noted that those standards had been – essentially – trashed by a right-wing group that calls itself the “National Association of Scholars,” which is funded primarily by the right-wing groups like the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Olin Foundation, and the Bradley Foundation. These groups are NOT friends of public schooling. Interestingly, the NAS also intervened in the standards writing process in South Dakota, where Republican Governor Kristi Noem, like Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, issued an executive order banning the teaching of “critical race theory” and “divisive concepts.” Noem , like Youngkin, ditched a set of standards crafted by “a group composed of a wide range of historians and educators.”
The AHA, in a letter to the South Dakota Board of Education said,
“The standards you are considering would do significant harm to students in your state. The substantial gaps in the knowledge, critical thinking skills, and habits of mind taught to South Dakota high school students would limit their preparedness for college as well as their access to early college credit… these standards would result in ignorance of fundamental understandings about American history…”
Which really is the point isn’t it? Republicans want public schools to teach a sanitized version of American history, a version built on conservative political bias.
Consider the omission of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a dream” speech, and the emphasis on Reagan’s “shining city” speech.
The fact that Republicans are citing Reagan as some kind of whitewash for the new history and social science standards speaks volumes, and it shows how clueless and careless they are about historical facts.
The truth about Reagan is,
* that he wasnโt really that popular;
* that he RAISED taxesโฆas journalist Will Bunch noted, โReagan signed measures that increased federal taxes every year of his two-term presidency except the first and the last. These included a higher gasoline levy, a 1986 tax reform deal that included the largest corporate tax increase in American history, and a substantial raise in payroll taxes in 1983 as part of a deal to keep Social Security solvent. While wealthy Americans benefitted from Reagan’s tax policies, blue-collar Americans paid a higher percentage of their income in taxes when Reagan left office than when he came in.โ
* that he sold weapons to terrorists and tried to hide it, and broke U.S. law and subverted the Constitution ( the Iran-Contra affair: see, https://millercenter.org/issues-policy/foreign-policy/iran-contra-affair);
* that he tripled the national debt, caused a huge spike in the trade deficit, and started the hollowing-out of the US standard of living;
* that he regularly invoked racist metaphors and used racist language, and he was – in fact – a racist.
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/reagan-nixon-and-race
It is no surprise that Youngkin – who ran an overtly racist campaign for governor – would preside over this kind of racist historical revisionism.
Shouldn’t we just call it what it is?
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