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Friday, July 15, 2016

After hours of testimony, state board adopts history guidelines | EdSource

After hours of testimony, state board adopts history guidelines | EdSource:

After hours of testimony, state board adopts history guidelines



 After listening to five hours of charged disagreements by Hindus, Muslims and others on how their religions and culture should be depicted in California classrooms, the State Board of Education adopted new social science guidelines Thursday that will stress teaching critical thinking and objective inquiry so that students can determine historical truths for themselves.

“We are not the arbiter of historical debate,” State Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Adams, who oversaw the process of approving the guidelines, told the state board. “We will turn it over to students to make their own judgment.”
Seven years in the making and hundreds of pages in length, the new History-Social Science Framework was suspended in 2009 during the economic recession and revived two years ago. The framework is not a curriculum or a textbook; it’s an instruction guide for teachers on the state’s K-12 history and social science standards.
The standards haven’t been updated since 1996 but the new framework will serve as a historical update and the basis for publishers to rewrite K-8 textbooks, which they will start submitting for approval next year. High schools choose After hours of testimony, state board adopts history guidelines | EdSource:
Big Education Ape: History Social Science Framework - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education) - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/history-social-science-framework-year.html