The State Board of Education today voted to implement new changes to the standards and benchmarks on the curriculum of various subjects. African American history was one of them. It included changes to the topics of African American history that are required to be discussed in the classroom and gave examples of various historical figures to use in facilitating the instruction of various topics and time-periods as it relates to African American history.
Representative Dianne Hart issued the following statement, “Today the State Board of Education has solidified a lackluster version of African American history into our State’s k12 curriculum. We must do better in offering a curriculum that is both age-appropriate and truthful. The curriculum passed today does no fully take into the recommendations of the African American History Task Force, which include examining the ‘contemporary issues impacting Africans and African Americans.’ Other examples include the fact that many of the other social studies topics voted on today, require as a standard that Elementary students be able to explain or describe various parts of history. The African American curriculum simply has elementary students identifying various famous African Americans. Education is a critical part of an individual’s personal foundation and when you chose to build a foundation on falsehoods, lies, or by simply erasing history, you’ve laid a foundation that will ultimately fail.”
