Virginia Board of Education Rejects GOP Governor’s Proposed History Education Standards

Virginia Board of Education Rejects GOP Governor’s Proposed History Education Standards

Reagan Reese on November 18, 2022

The Virginia Board of Education will not advance proposed revisions to the state’s history standards following backlash, the board told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The state board of education unanimously rejected the American history curriculum changes proposed by Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Thursday, instead ordering Virginia’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow to write new standards, the board told the DCNF. The decision comes after community members critiqued the standards for calling Native Americans “America’s first immigrants.”

“Earlier this fall, Balow recommended decoupling the standards and curriculum frameworks (reflecting the department’s historic practice in revising the state’s history standards) and the Board of Education accepted her recommendation,” the board said in a statement to the DCNF. “Much of the recent public comment has centered on content that is still in the draft curriculum frameworks. As Balow said yesterday, the content in the revised curriculum frameworks presented in August is still before the Board of Education and has not been discarded.”

In kindergarten students learn about patriotism and how to label their county in Virginia, the revised standards stated. The students are taught about America’s first “immigrants” from Asia and how the immigrants transitioned from hunting and gathering to farming.

“This is our home. We are not immigrants,” Aaron Winston, a board member for the Virginia Tribal Education Consortium, said at the meeting, according to ABC 8 News. “No one is trying to say the English didn’t come from England or the Chinese didn’t come from China. Why are you telling us that now we come from somewhere else?”

Balow said it was “wrong” to call the Native American community immigrants and said the language will be adjusted in the next standards, ABC 8 News reported.

The proposed changes included critical thinking skills in first grade, and in fourth grade students learn about the “development of slavery in colonial Virginia.” In 11th grade, students are taught about the “development of African American culture in America and the impact of the institution of slavery,” the standards showed.

“The erasure of Black Americans in these new proposed changes is disrespectful and harmful. Teaching history in a truthful way does not make our children victims, but shows them how far we have come and also how far we have to go,” Monica Hutchinson, a member of the NAACP chapter in Henrico, Virginia, said at the meeting, according to ABC News 8.

Youngkin’s office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.