RALEIGH — A Feb. 3 Fox News report on a draft proposal to change the way U.S. history is taught in North Carolina schools set off a public firestorm that sent the Department of Public Instruction back to the drawing board.
The brouhaha revealed a high level of suspicion and mistrust among critics of the state’s education establishment, as well as frustration among officials charged with administering the state’s public schools. It also focused intense public scrutiny on state education policymakers who often operate in relative obscurity.
The State Board of Education is the body responsible for approving the curriculum of required courses taught in North Carolina public schools. A 2008 blue ribbon commission had reported that these courses were “too broad and not deep enough.”
The commission recommended that a new curriculum be developed that would “limit learning objectives at each grade level to only those that are of undisputable importance and can be successfully taught … in the time available.”
Acting on the commission’s findings, the board approved changes to the math and science curriculums in 2009 with little fanfare. Next up were English and social studies. The team chosen to work on the social studies curriculum was mindful of the commission’s findings, and of complaints from teachers, parents, and students that there was not enough time in the required 11th grade U.S. history course to cover more recent history.
As a result, important historical events in the late 20th Century, such as the roots of conflict in the Middle East, the aftermath of the Cold War, and the emergence of terrorism were being dealt with lightly if at all. The curriculum writers’ solution was to focus the 11th grade U.S. history course on events since the end of reconstruction in 1877, and relegate the study of everything before that to earlier grades.
Following standard procedure, the first draft of the proposed new curriculum was posted on the Department of Public Instruction’s website on Dec. 15 of last year, and comments from the field were solicited. History teachers were asked to weigh in with comments and suggestions, and at least one “webinar” event was conducted later that month to allow virtual face-to-face contact with DPI officials.
As details of the draft proposal became more widely known, negative feedback from the field began to mount. By late January, North Carolina lawmakers were beginning to get involved, contacting DPI officials to pass on comments from teachers and other constituents concerned about the proposal.
Critics of the proposed changes said that confining the study of the nation’s founding and such issues as slavery and the Civil War to the elementary and middle school levels would weaken the curriculum and leave students with an underdeveloped sense of American history. They argued that the concepts and events surrounding the creation of the republic and its near demise are essential to a mature understanding of the American experience, and should be explored by older students.
DPI officials working on the proposed revisions were well aware of these comments from the field before the Fox News report. However, the intensity of the public reaction to the report caught them by surprise.
After the report aired, the department posted a news release claiming that, “National media coverage … included an incomplete description of the new standards.” Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson argued that the new curriculum would actually increase the amount of time devoted to the study of the nation’s history, when information in all relevant courses — such as 10th-grade civics and economics, and seventh-grade North Carolina history — were included.
But a major blow was dealt to the plan when Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, D-Dare, weighed in against it. In a Feb. 12 letter to Atkinson and State Board of Education Chair Bill Harrison, Basnight said that he was “absolutely opposed” to the proposed changes.
Echoing the comments of earlier critics, Basnight wrote, “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. Furthermore, it is my belief that only high school students have the capacity to understand complex and awful parts of our nation’s history such as slavery and the Civil War.”
Basnight’s opposition may have been the final nail in the coffin of “Draft 1.0,” as the proposed revision had come to be called. In a presentation to lawmakers on Feb. 16, school board Executive Director Rebecca Garland conceded that the proposal was “dead on arrival.” She said the board will now consider plans calling for two history courses, one covering events from pre-Columbian times through the Civil War and reconstruction, and the other dealing with events since 1877.
Garland told lawmakers that since the Fox News report came out her department had received over 7,000 emails, many of them abusive in nature, about the proposal. She called the report “erroneous” and blasted an individual whom she did not name for sending the draft to Fox News, “rather than share his comments with us.”
She said that because of the Fox News story, her curriculum writers had to spend “a significant amount of time to clear up erroneous information that was sent out over the internet” as the story went viral. She defended the work her writers were trying to do, citing a law approved last year allowing more U.S. history to be taught in middle school.
The individual Garland seemed to be blaming for initiating the public dust-up is Mike Belter, a Rockingham County history teacher. Belter had been one of the teachers who had attempted to participate in the Jan. 12 webinar with DPI.
Belter told Carolina Journal Fox News first contacted him. Belter said that he had shared his concerns with several people, and that one of those was a friend whose daughter worked for Fox News. DPI officials say they were told by Fox News that someone had contacted them with a lead for the story.
Belter is not certain whether it was his actions that sparked the Fox News story, but even if it was he’s not apologizing. “The public needed to know,” he said. “I still believe that if all this hadn’t come out, ‘Draft 1.0’ would be very close to the final product.”
As things now stand, the “final product” won’t be known for some time. Following normal procedure, a new draft will most likely be posted in April, and further comments solicited. “The State Board of Education is not in a hurry,” Garland told legislators, explaining that the board was more interested in making sure it get the new curriculum right before it’s implemented.
Jim Stegall is a contributor to Carolina Journal.