US HISTORY EDUCATION STANDARDS: THE INFLUENCE OF STATE POLICIES ON THE FORMATION OF THE CONTENT OF K-12 SCHOOL CURRICULUMS (2019–2023)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26661//zhv-2024-9-61-25Keywords:
Historical Narrative, Curriculum (or Curricula), Educational Standards, History Education, K-12 Education, The United States (US)Abstract
The article analyzes the process of development and revision of history and social studies educational standards in US public K-12 schools, based on the examples of North Carolina (2019–2021) and South Dakota (2021–2023).
The study focuses on analyzing the influence of states’ policies on shaping K-12 curriculum content in the aforementioned states.
The additional context of the work is the nationwide debate that unfolded between 2019 and 2023 regarding racial justice and the reassessment of the American past. This national discourse materialized in the confrontation be-tween two incompatible historical visions: the «Narrative of 1776» – a «tri-umphantly patriotic» account founded on the ideals of 1776 and a «narrative of progress» – and the «Narrative of 1619» based on the ideas of the «1619 Project,» which centers slavery and systemic racism as the foundation for the subsequent development of the US (the «original sin of America» thesis). The central goal of this paper is to analyze how this ideological confrontation impacts the normative frameworks of history education at the regional level. The paper analyzes previous attempts to adopt educational standards at the federal level, such as the «National Standards for US History» in 1992–1994 and the revision of «The Advanced Placement U.S. History Course Framework» (APUSH) in 2012–2015. The author concludes that the failure of these at-tempts resulted in an institutional compromise, exemplified by the «Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy» (EAD Roadmap, 2021), where manda-tory standards were replaced by an advisory, voluntary approach.
Against the background of the historically decentralized US educational sys-tem, where previous attempts to create nationwide history and social studies standards have failed, the regional level has become the arena for ideological conflict over the historical content taught to schoolchildren.
The author concludes that the regional dimension (state level) was marked by socio-political confrontation over the content of K-12 history/social stud-ies education and a process of politicization, the nature of which, however, differed by state. A common theme for both states during the revision of educational standards was the need to account for the tragic experience of American national/regional history. For North Carolina, the legacy of slavery and segregation played the main role, while for South Dakota, the focus was on the representation of Native Americans.
Beyond the shared themes, the author identifies significant differences in the institutional processes of history/social studies standard adoption. In North Carolina, an institutional compromise was reached between Democratic and Republican representatives on the State Board of Education. This solution involved including both tragic (the existence of systemic racism and slavery) and triumphant (the fight against racism and slavery) pages of American his-tory. Conversely, the standard revision process in South Dakota was marked by direct executive interference in the legislatively defined adoption procedure by Governor K. Noem. Advocating for a curriculum based on the «founding principles» of America, the Governor’s administration led to the complete exclusion of mentions of the Oceti Sakowin community, ignoring resolute crit-icism from the American Historical Association (AHA) and tribal organizations. The author sees the perspective for further research in expanding the geo-graphical scope of the study of standard revision processes at the state level. An additional direction may involve shifting the focus from standards to other educational documents – curricula, lesson plans, etc. – to assess the full impact of these ideological disputes.
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