Coming to a Classroom Near You: Removing geography, adding colonialism

New social studies standards are coming to all Minnesota K-12 public schools this fall. According to the Minnesota Department of Education, the revised standards and benchmarks reflect a “shift away from standards that list a set of content students are expected to know” to conceptual learning and narratives.

The biggest structural change in the 2021 standards is the addition of an entirely new fifth strand: ethnic studies. The three anchor standards in this new strand require students to: analyze “the ways power and language construct the social identities of race, religion, geography, ethnicity, and gender” and “apply these understandings to one’s own social identities and other groups living in Minnesota, centering those whose stories and histories have been marginalized, erased, or ignored”; describe how individuals and communities have fought for “liberation against systemic and coordinated exercises of power” and “organize with others to engage in” such activities; and “understand the roots of contemporary systems of oppression” and “apply lessons from the past that could eliminate historical and contemporary injustices.”

Within these standards, and those for history, geography, economics, and citizenship and government, are K-12 grade-level benchmarks that represent the specific knowledge and/or skill a student must master. Since the benchmarks don’t go through an external approval process, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) writes whatever content it wants and then distributes it to schools to teach.

For example, kindergarteners, five year olds, will have to “retell a story about an unfair experience that conveys a power imbalance.” Under the old benchmarks, kindergartners described “symbols, songs and traditions that identify our nation and state” such as the American flag, bald eagle, Pledge of Allegiance, and Minnesota state flag. This has been changed to students’ identifying a “symbol, song, pledge or tradition that is important” to them. First graders — six year olds — will have to “identify examples of ethnicity, equality, liberation and systems of power” and use those examples to “construct meanings for those terms.”

Under new geography standards, places and regions must be understood through “how they are influenced by power structures.” Gone is the benchmark that required fourth-grade students to “name and locate countries neighboring the United States” — like Canada and Mexico — and their major cities.

U.S. history standards that once spelled out many of the events and time periods that anchor students’ understanding have been replaced with broad concepts focused on “dominant and non-dominant narratives.”

As an example, here is one of the old history standards:

The economic growth, cultural innovation and political apathy of the 1920s ended in the Great Depression which spurred new forms of government intervention and renewed labor activities, followed by World War II and an economic resurgence. (The Great Depression and World War II: 1920-1945)

Here is one of the new history standards:

Context, Change, and Continuity: Ask historical questions about context, change and continuity in order to identify and analyze dominant and non-dominant narratives about the past.

The old standard identifies a specific time period and specific events for students to study. The replacement standard focuses on “dominant and non-dominant narratives.” That framework imposes a single interpretive lens before students have built the factual knowledge needed to evaluate competing interpretations in the first place. 

The consequences of removing that factual foundation are visible in national data. According to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, 40 percent of 8th graders are below the basic benchmark in U.S. history, and scores have been dropping consecutively since 2014. Only six percent of students could identify two ideas from the Constitution and/or the Declaration of Independence that Martin Luther King, Jr. might have been referring to in his “I Have a Dream” speech and then explain why King might have cited those ideas. Less than half could correctly identify a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Students need anchors — dates, names, places, and events — that help them make sense of the past. Conceptual frameworks, when divorced from specific facts, risk leaving students susceptible to the idea that history is merely a collection of competing narratives rather than a record of things that actually happened.

In this new edition of “Coming to a Classroom Near You,” American Experiment takes a closer look at what is being added — and removed — from students’ social studies education and raises real questions about whether Minnesota students will be better prepared academically and civically or whether they will simply be better trained to view the world through a particular ideological lens. It is worth four minutes of your time before school starts this fall.

______________

School board members, you have the responsibility and authority to select curricula to teach these standards and benchmarks. Here are balanced, constructive options without the political framing. You should also insist that any new curriculum adoption go through a full board review process — not just administrative approval. Ask for a comparison of curricula alternatives. Ask what the state standards actually require.

Parents have a role to play too. Ask your child’s school what curriculum they plan to use for the new standards this fall. Remember, under Minnesota Statute 120B.20, you have the right to review these instructional materials, opt your child out of them, and request alternative instruction. Most parents don’t know that.