North Carolina State Public Education Wants to Eliminate Founding Fathers in History Classes
posted at 8:34 pm on February 5, 2010 by Rovin
[ Education ]
Who needs the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence?
From the Foundry, a subsidiary of the Heritage Foundation, Julia Shaw has uncovered another liberal new-age enlightenment process developing in the State of North Carolina. The idea is to start the history teaching period at 1877 so the students can feel—get this—”better connected to the present”:
Forget George Washington, James Madison, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln—nothing meaningful happened in America before 1877.
That’s the lesson North Carolina public high schools may start teaching. Under proposed changes in their high school history curriculum, the U.S. History course (which seniors take) will cover events from 1877 forward only.
It will be as if the American Founding never happened.
According to Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the goal of this change is to teach what students will feel connected to, “where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day.” link
Do you get the feeling that 2010 is the year when the liberal socialist establishment is doubling down, (or in Obama’s case, tripling), thinking they just might never reach this crescendo of dementia again before some one puts a “freeze” on their path to never never land?
For you folks who feel inclined to leave an impression or opinion:
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
This isn’t shocking to me. Living in Raleigh, NC for the past few years has quickly taught me the evil that liberalism is. We must take back the NC legislature this year. If we dont’ do it this year, we never will.
Gov. Apple-dumplin’ Perdue is such an empty vessel I doubt she can even spell her own name withouth help.
SouthernGent on February 5, 2010 at 9:24 PM
I keep hearing this big idea lingo from history teachers.
Code for something I’m sure.
Disturb the Universe on February 5, 2010 at 9:29 PM
Yes, but do they learn it?
Disturb the Universe on February 5, 2010 at 9:35 PM
Homeschooling is the way to go. What my daughter and several friends learned in high school, they’re being taught again in college.
Laura on February 5, 2010 at 9:42 PM
1877 -1913 the Progressive Era. Of course History will start in 1877.
This is the Common Core program. You want to be scared read more about it & who is behind it. History is a means for commentary.
Duncan is pushing for a National Curriculum to take the decision out of the states (race to the top).
I understand there is also in the works a move to replace either Western Civ or World History with a class called “global perspectives” again ignoring the past & focusing on only the present – with commentary.
batterup on February 5, 2010 at 9:55 PM
The link you supplied took me to several others that were very interesting batterup……thanks
Rovin on February 5, 2010 at 10:43 PM
Hmmmm? 1877 – Hmmmm? Wasn’t North Carolina on the wrong side of the Civil War and the slavery issue? Let’s see, Civil War ended in 1865, let’s give it a number of years for Grant to finish his presidency, for Reconstruction to be close to completion – yeah, 12 years should be long enough after the end of the Civil War for it and slavery to not be topics in our teaching of US history. Yeah, that’s it, let’s start teaching US history in 1877!
PatMac on February 5, 2010 at 11:18 PM
Rovin – I am trying to fix an error I made in my earlier post but my post keeps getting eaten. I am assuming at this point it is the link that is messing up the posting.
Common Core is an opposition group.
I meant to link to the Program in NC is called The Partnership for 21st Century Skills I think linking to them is causing my posts to get eaten.
Please pull up the website 21stCenturySkills (dot) org that is the Group that is changing the teaching of history. Have a good look over who & where they are.
Please do look over Common Core’s website because they provide educational arguments against the p21 program. Sorry for that confusion – hope this makes sense, it’s hard to post not knowing if it’s going to go through or if now I am going to have 3 post in a row.
Anyway I am glad you are looking into this I hope you also look into the “race to the top” program.
batterup on February 6, 2010 at 12:30 AM
Someone probably heard that Conyers was demanding that the 1787 Constitutional Convention be done over because there weren’t enough blacks present the first time.
Steven Den Beste on February 6, 2010 at 1:07 AM
You don’t understand. if we eliminate all discussion of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and of Democracy and the Founding of the Republic and the Gettysburg Address and the Civil War, we can concentrate on what’s really important: Why America is a terrible country. I’m only surprised they didn’t pick 2000 as the starting year. After all, once you’ve covered the evil Bush administration and the glory of Obama what’s left to talk about?
Fred 2 on February 6, 2010 at 1:26 AM
Ancient Greece, the Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution … just a lot of white noise. Start at the real beginning of the left’s version of history, the Soviet Union c. 1905 and the triumph of the proletariat.
With any luck, we’ll reach the end of that history, c. 2010 when Barry, the First, gets his comeuppance and we can restore our real history and continue our journey in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
erp on February 6, 2010 at 8:56 AM
Disconnect the people from their history, their core principles and values, then enslave them.
tarpon on February 6, 2010 at 10:14 AM
Some did not listen.
MICHELLE OBAMA: “Barack knows that we are going to have to make sacrifices; we are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.”
publiuspen on February 6, 2010 at 10:30 AM
My husband is a high school history teacher. He read this article and agrees with the premise. The reason is because he has had the unfortunate experience of “no child left behind”=translated=teaching to the test.
Children should learn colonial history and state history in 4th, 5th, 8th grade. High school should be geared to later American history. It’s just too much to cover effectively. The teacher loses the ability to do what is most important=create a love of and interest in history.
keebs on February 6, 2010 at 11:50 AM
I am a history teacher as well, both United States and World History, along with Government, Ecomomics, and elementary education 2-4 and middle school. I more than understand the “teaching to the test” concept. It has resulted in having to forgo the more interesting parts of History to concentrate on what the past state tests indicate are more likely to be on the test. American History up to the end of the civil war is taught in middle school. Students are too young at that age to connect almost anything to what they need to know later in life. When I reteach that in my World history class ( American History teachers have no time to do it anymore because of the need to teach to the test)the students know very little if anything about it. Its almost all new to them. In otherwords, they did not connect to it when it was taught to them as younger children. Perhaps this is what they are hoping to capitalize on in NC.
The problem with early American history for socialist is that the constitution created in that time was for a republic, not a democracy. Socialim requires a central goverment control that Democracy provides, but a republic does not allow. Of course effectively removing the history by not teaching it in high school, makes it easier to subvert the constitution with any propaganda they devise.
The main problem is one created by the goverment, requiring a test that can ask any question within our history and the teachers are not allowed to know what is on the test until it is being taken by their students. The teachers are held accountable to the successes and more so, the failures of the studnets who take the test. To protect themselves, the teachers must look at past test and disect them to determine the probablities of a question being on the test. For example I consistently found that most of the questions covered events up top the second world war and after that, most of the questions were on current events of the last decade. So I taught, and retaught, what I had found had the highest percentage of presents on the test and just glossed over the rest. I can assure you it is no fun, especially when you know that your held accountable even if the failure is not yours. When it is no fun to teach, it is even less fun to be the student trying to learn it.
Why are we doing this? The goverment became involved. States are held accountable to the federal government who holds the purse string, so they come up with a state test to create that paper trail for that accountablity. The buck gets passed down and the teachers get held accountable for the failures.
The concept of a standard end of course test is not a bad idea, but it should be only for that course, standardrized, and most importantly, known to the teacher. As long as cheats are not used, the students still has to demonstate the basic requires knowledge, which is what should be tested. When the teacher knows what the student is being held accountable for knowing, they can emphise that knowledge and spend time on branching out to the interest of the students or local interest. In other words, make the course more interesting and fun. Does that work? It does. I worked with a class of elementary special education children. I made every lesson into a game, taught with song and rhyme. The results; my students had a 200% advancement over other teachers using the more traditional methods. Im ny highschool classes I tried to make them interesting with side stories or information. In my geography class I picked the hot spots in the world and studied those counries and their neighbors and other countries associated to them. I hit on the traditional areas of study, but went further to look at data that provided how the people lived in those countries and why they are having the problems they have.
Teaching to the test, I taught only what I knew they better know for my own good, not so much theirs, and it was not fun for me nor them.
If there ever was a further reason to get big government out of the classroom, it is found in special education. In special educaiton, teaching the student is something that is done after the federal and state paperwork is done.
When I was preparing my regular students for their state test I gave them a released copy of the special educaiton test as a review. It was interesting to hear that the students thought the special education test was harder than the one they were given. Having compared the two, I have to agree with them. The tragedy is that the special education students are less prepared than my regular students to take that test. They typically are handicaped by the restriction put on what they are allowed to be taught and how they are taught, work out of basic text, then given less instuction time to do it.
Franklyn on February 7, 2010 at 4:43 PM
First of all, I feel that many teachers have been thrown to the wolves in some respects to the testing guidelines that tie their hands. We could have a strong debate just covering how the state and federal hierarchy has injected its body politic into the curriculum, and the necessity for testing along with the arbitrary rules that controls the almighty dollars that finally reach the local districts. Teachers like keeb’s husband and Franklyn have been caught up in this struggle between “teaching” and protecting their jobs, while the students are stuck in the middle, preventing the teachers from accomplishing their primary priority—-teaching. Many teachers have been given the “bum rap” that they no longer have the passion to teach, and are trapped in a profession where their primary function has become job security rather than educating. The merits of this argument could also be debated from several perspectives.
That said, the purpose of my post was pointing out the slippery slope where the founding principles of the creation of this great nation appears to be losing its appeal, and I might add, the misguided priorities of teaching American history. This is where I completely disagree with keebs statement, “Children should learn colonial history and state history in 4th, 5th, 8th grade. High school should be geared to later American history”. I would submit that if the latter years of the student’s education process remains the strongest period of retention, the priority should be retaining the founding principles of this nation—-the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and the ultimate sacrifices our founding fathers made to allow for the liberties and freedoms we enjoy today. No other period in our American History could have materialized without these great men framing our destinies understanding the delicate balance between a representative government and the previous yoke of totalitarianism. Under today’s liberal mindset, our current “leadership” appears to want to marginalize the single greatest moments in our short history, while claiming more recent history should be a priority in educating our children.
We, the people, must not let this happen.
I can not buy into this excuse that there’s “just too much to cover”. If this is the case, then maybe there’s too much emphasis on liberal arts, (for example), and not what I consider a priority in American History education—-why we are still a free nation.
Rovin on February 8, 2010 at 3:09 PM