Reply to DCPS Social Studies Curriculum Concerns

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Reply to "DCPS Social Studies Curriculum Concerns"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kid is much younger but I have wondered this myself. I'm as progressive as they come politically, but I do feel like schools basically steer clear if a lot of history and civics these days because it's "too complex" to communicate to young kids.

So when I was in elementary school, we learned about a lot of this stuff, though in a simplistic, inherently biased way. We learned about colonialism but mostly only from the perspective of colonists, for instance. I think now what happens is that teaching with more nuance and a broader perspective takes more time, and schools are always pressed for time when it comes to curriculum. Science and social studies are what get skipped in elementary because they aren't tested, and schools and teachers are heavily incentivized to teach to the tests.

So I think we need two things:

1) Some kind of agreement as to what "the basics" are when it comes to social studies and physics, so that schools can teach them without running into this ethical morass where teaching anything means spending huge amounts of time providing additional context and perspectives; and

2) A way to incentivize schools to prioritize SS/civics in the elementary and middle school grades, when currently all the incentives lie in spending more time on reading and math (fyi, writing also suffers from this problem because it's harder to test writing levels so it gets de-emphasized and kids arrive in MS reading well but writing poorly).[/quote]

Progressive is not the issue

Bible thumping idiots trying to take over our schools are

[/quote]

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