State drops disputed U.S. history curriculum plan
Library of Congress/Historical Society of Pennsylvania
State Rep. Tim Spear, D-Washington, said in an e-mail today that a “new proposal will be forthcoming.”
“I am glad to see there has been so much public opposition to the proposed change by teachers, parents, students, legislators, government officials and citizens,” he wrote. “It was
this grassroots opposition that prompted education officials to go back to
the drawing board. Let’s hope the next plan is better than the last.”
Outrage in recent days had grown beyond the initial reaction from Tea Party activists mobilizing after a Fox News report to include a range of critics, including state Senate President Marc Basnight, whose opinion weighs heavily on public policy.
The proposed 11th-grade curriculum would have examined U.S. history after 1877 and left instruction on previous periods to pre-high school grades. The department of public instruction had said that the 11th-grade class would examine post-Reconstruction U.S history in greater depth.
“As a reader of history myself, I think that no one should graduate from high school without a thorough understanding of the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers, the writing of the Constitution, and the personalities involved,” Basnight wrote in a letter objecting to the proposal to the state school superintendent and the chairman of the state Board of Education.
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Reacher says:
idiots!
Lisa says:
Spear is a johnny-come-lately to this story. Where are the leaders? Like Basnight, he comes in after he sees how angry people have become over this issue. People may find Hood Richardson, the Commissioner from Beaufort County who is challenging Basnight, somewhat abrasive, but he is out there leading, exposing the nonsense that is going in government, long before it becomes a hot issue in the public space. He’s not chiming in after the fact. He has courage and that’s what we need in our elected representatives.