The State Board of Education approved new social studies curriculum standards on a series of 9-5 votes.
The final votes came after two days of lengthy debate this week in which the board considered 213 amendments to the standards for kindergarten through 12th grade. New standards for the high school economics course passed on a 14-0 vote.
The updated standards, known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, will be effective with the 2010-2011 school year. Next school year, educators will receive training on the new standards and will write curriculum guides. The new standards will then be used in classrooms beginning in the 2011-2012 school year.
Work on the social studies curriculum began in January 2009 and attracted intense international attention and comment. Standing-room-only crowds watched as the board debated many sensitive topics.
Among the amendments that were approved that attracted considerable debate were these standards:
• Analyze Abraham Lincoln’s ideas about liberty, equality, union and government as contained in his first and second inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address and contrast them with the ideas contained in Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address. (8th grade U.S. History);
• Examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America and guaranteed its free exercise by saying that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, and compare and contrast this to the phrase “separation of church and state.” (Government);
• Explain instances of institutional racism in American society. (Sociology);
• Discuss the solvency of long term entitlements
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