A battle over new proposed educational standards for the teaching of social studies in the state of South Dakota has been going on for over a month after Governor Kristi Noem introduced a new proposed curriculum on August 15th.
Governor Noem and a number of her top allies have been playing defense since then, and faced their toughest challenge yet yesterday during a day of public comment on the topic, hosted by the South Dakota Board of Education Standards.
The standards were introduced by Governor Noem last month, and are grounded in material from Hillsdale College — a private conservative college in Michigan.
Per the Brookings Register, the new standards borrow heavily from “The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum,” “which glorifies the nation’s founders and criticizes the expansion of U.S. government programs.”
Per a press release issued by Noem’s office at the time of the announcement:
“Last year, Governor Noem became the first candidate or public official in the country to sign the “1776 Pledge to Save our Schools.” At the time, she and Dr. Ben Carson co-wrote an article for Fox News outlining the Pledge and why it is important.
“Since becoming the first office holder in the country to sign the ‘1776 Pledge,’ Governor Noem has followed through with action to promote a true and balanced telling of American history,” said Adam Waldeck, President of 1776 Action. “These standards will set the bar for social studies education in this country. I look forward to continuing to work with Governor Noem to restore honest, patriotic education.”
Noem’s spokesman Ian Fury — who is himself a Hillsdale alumnus — shared the following sentiment on Twitter yesterday after reading the mainstream media’s coverage of the first day of debate over the new standards.
In the thread of replies that Fury’s tweet received, opponents of the proposed curricula called the standards the following: a “crusade to destroy public education” and a “growing effort to gloss over real education by bombarding students with so much information they will only be able to accept the word of their teachers.”
Per the Associated Press, opponents of the standards said they would be “saddled” “with expanding and unwieldy criteria to cover in classrooms but fails to teach students to think analytically about history.”
Contrarily, the AP reported the following about the proposal’s supporters:
“Conservatives and some parents who spoke at the Board of Education Standards hearing in Aberdeen on Monday defended the proposal as a robust effort to address a lack of knowledge of American civics and revive an appreciation for the nation’s founding ideals.”
Monday’s hearings were the first in a series of three public input events that will take place ahead of a decision on the new standards which is scheduled to be made in March of 2023.
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…opponents of the standards said they would be “saddled” “with expanding and unwieldy criteria to cover in classrooms but fails to teach students to think analytically about history.”
Let me interpret that progressive remark for you.
Students would be expected to actually learn civics and the underlying truths and foundations that make this subject important and would not be force-fed our own socialistic narrative.
way to go Governor Noem. How are our kids supposed to follow the Constitution when they’ve never read it or know the background of it. Anyone that is against this is simply anti-American, no other word for it. Go Kristi!