NC social studies documents revised after some felt they overemphasized Black topics
Updated Thursday with delay on board vote.
New high school social studies documents for North Carolina students were changed because of concerns they focused too much on the perspectives of Black people compared to other minority and marginalized groups.
The state Department of Public Instruction is working on documents that will help teachers use new K-12 social studies standards that focus more on racism, discrimination and the perspectives of marginalized groups.
State Superintendent Catherine Truitt said Wednesday she had worked to change the high school documents because the examples for marginalized groups were too focused on one group — African Americans.
“There were a disproportionate number of topics for any given standard and objective that had to do with one community over another,” Truitt said at Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting. “So I asked the team to go back and have more proportionality of topics to go with specific standards and objectives.”
The state board will vote in July on the “unpacking documents” that suggest how high school and middle school teachers can teach the new standards. On Thursday, the board postponed for two weeks a vote on the document for elementary schools and a glossary of social studies terms for teachers.
Disproportionate discussion of Black topics
State board member James Ford, a supporter of the new social studies standards, questioned Truitt about which group she felt had been disproprortionately represented.
Truitt, a Republican, said she became concerned about the lack of diversity in the examples included in initial drafts for the high school American History class. For instance, she said all but one of the examples of reading assignments and topics about the experiences and achievements of minorities and marginalized peoples related to African-American culture.
“There was nothing about European discrimination of various groups, anti-Semitism, Asian slavery, etc.,” Truitt said.
Another American History standard looks at how slavery, xenophobia, disenfranchisement and intolerance have affected individual and group perspectives of themselves as Americans. But Truitt said 13 of the 17 suggested resources dealt with African American topics.
Truitt said 13 of the 25 example topics about racism, oppression and discrimination of indigenous peoples, racial minorities and other marginalized groups were African American.
“That’s the disproportionality that I was referring to,” she said.
Lori Carlin, DPI section chief of social studies and arts education, said they’ve “fixed” that problem.
Black minister and Durham social justice activist Paul Scott charged that Truitt “seems to fear that the curriculum will be too Black.”
“How dare she further marginalize the descendants of Africans who were brought here in chains!” Scott said in an email Wednesday. “Our children deserve better!”
Including that ‘America is a great nation’
The new social studies have been a source of controversy even before their adoption in February in a split 7-5 vote by the board’s Democratic majority.
Critics accused the social studies standards of incorporating “Critical Race Theory,” a “scholarly framework that describes how race, class, gender, and sexuality organize American life,” according to the UNC-Chapel Hill history department. This view holds that systemic racism has been and continues to be a part of the nation’s history.
Critics call it Marxist, anti-American, racist and destructive. Concerns about Critical Race Theory led state Republican House lawmakers to pass a bill last month that puts new rules on how schools teach about race and history, including not promoting teaching that would make students feel guilt or discomfort due to their race or sex.
Some of the concerns were echoed Wednesday by the state board’s Republican members. Board member Amy White asked about including in all the social studies documents a statement about how “America is a great nation.”
“Through our challenges, through sacrifices, through our triumphs that America is the nation today that we should be proud of and blessed to live in,” White said.
Board member Jill Camnitz, who chairs the board committee working with the new standards, said they can discuss White’s concerns at the July board meeting.
Local control over social studies
Board member Olivia Oxendine said she’s concerned that the new middle school standards about innovation might not discuss the contributions of famous 20th century inventors like Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers and William Boeing.
“We’ve got a lot in there, rightfully so, on the contributions of women,” Oxendine said. “I know the names that I brought up are men, and they’re white men, but they still are heroes in the narrative of America.
“And I’m not saying that we’re trying to avoid that. I just feel the need to raise that up because these are such rich topics and our students are going to be deprived if they’re not presented.”
DPI staff stressed Wednesday that they can’t list every example because there are so many. In addition, the new standards are not a curriculum.
“As a local control state, each school and teacher will make final determinations about which, if any of these examples, to use,” Carlin said. “The idea is to provide teachers with a starting point and then they make a professional judgment about how best to engage their students with the materials they choose to use for the objective.”
Camnitz asked her colleagues to put aside their differences to adopt the new materials.
“Our vote tomorrow should not be based on whether we agree with the approved standards but rather on whether the support documents align with the standards,” Camnitz said.
This story was originally published June 2, 2021 at 3:42 PM with the headline "NC social studies documents revised after some felt they overemphasized Black topics."
