Re “Teachers, advocacy groups angered by Virginia’s proposed changes to history education” (Nov. 16): The kerfuffle over the history Standards of Learning is déja vu for any middle school social studies teacher working in Virginia when the first SOLs came out in 1998. I recall reading those SOLs and making discoveries indicating a partisan bias.
The Democratic Party became firmly established during the controversial presidency of Andrew Jackson, but these SOLs said nothing about the man or his tenure in the oval office. The most glaring example came in the section on the 20th century, where the standards gave more attention to Richard Nixon and his foreign policy than they did to Franklin Roosevelt. The former was a Republican who became the first American president to resign in disgrace, and the latter was a Democrat who was elected four times in a row and led the country out of the Great Depression and to victory in World War II.
Did the SOLs change my approach to my subject? No. I still taught about Jackson and the start of the Democratic Party. I gave more time to the four-term president than the standards called for and balanced Nixon’s foreign policy with his corruption. I believed then, as I do now, that the teacher in the classroom knows more about his or her subject and how to teach it than the politicians who attempt to use curriculum as a tool for partisan propaganda.
Steve Bailey
Richmond