A number of cultural groups, historians and Virginia residents are sounding the alarm about historical inaccuracies and oversights in the latest draft of history standards for K-12 education.
The draft did not teach about the legacy of slavery and the Civil War in Virginia, as well as the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer community. Critics think this shows that the governor is using his power to rewrite history and downplay bad events.
James J. Fedderman, president of the Virginia Education Association, told Yahoo News that the Youngkin administration wants to change the standards. There is an attack on these standards that puts parents against teachers and puts teachers against parents.
The K-5 standards did not mention Juneteenth in last week's draft. The two have been restored to the draft.
The Virginia Department of Education did not mean to leave out any information.
The August draft included broad standards for each grade level and course. There has been a lot of public comment on the draft curriculum frameworks.
The latest draft from the Virginia DOE contains a lot of changes from a draft it released in July. A man by the name ofRalph Northam. The draft standard attempted to include eras in which racism and slavery were accepted in America, as well as eras in which antisemitism and homophobia were rampant. Youngkin wants to downplay the role of bigotry in US history.
The latest version does not include the words "Nazis" and "Final Solution." During the Revolutionary War, it was said that Virginia's capital was moved from Jamestown to Williamsburg.
According to the draft, the last president from Virginia was Zachary Taylor, who was elected in 1849. Wilson served as governor of New Jersey before becoming the U.S. president.
The recommended guidelines were supposed to be voted on by the Virginia Board of Education in August. The board was told to give Youngkin's five newly appointed board members more time to read the documents.
The last time the standards were updated was in 2015. The expectations for student learning in history and social sciences statewide are set by them.
Less than 60 days later, the department announced that it did not anticipate any major changes or deletions to the previous draft.
Over two years of consultation with a team of historians, professors, parents, students and museums, the original document under Northam was developed.
The original version went through more than 400 experts, who devoted thousands of hours of their time on the standards, and Fedderman lamented that their work is now being discarded.
The governor wants to hear from parents. He did not know why there had been no collaboration with his union.
He said that there has never been a decision that impacted children and public education without the Virginia Education Association being consulted. We were always consulted, even if they didn't take our advice.
It's not clear what process was followed for the latest proposal by the Youngkin administration. There were no answers to the question posed by the DOE.
The Thomas Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy think tank, and Ohio's Hillsdale College were involved in the drafting of the "1776 Report" on U.S. history. The American Historical Association condemned the report for being written hastily in one month after two desultory and tendentious hearings.
The American Historical Association described the word "racism" as a problem in the new document.
"You can argue that the central concepts in American history are freedom or liberty or democracy, but you cannot teach American history without helping students to understand thatracism has been a central theme." "You can't."
The best way to understand the world around us is to learn accurate history, according to Gail Flax.
She said that it was important to know what happened before and after.
A curriculum framework, a more detailed document that the Board of Education approves a year before its implementation, was not included in the revision.
Newby-Alexander is an endowed professor of Virginia Black history and culture at Norfolk State University.
She said that this is not an update. I have never seen a document like that before in my life.
No significant improvement has been shown by any revisions to date, Fedderman said.
If they push these standards through in the middle of the year, and students are assessed on all of these new standards without preparation, it will show that they don't have the skills. That isn't the case. The goalposts are continually moved by this administration.
There is a person with the name _____.
The Washington Post's Demetrius Freeman is pictured on the cover.
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