the competencies for history and social sciences are in desperate need of reviewing, to say the least. these standards neglect to explicitly mention slavery and jim crow, which I would think might warrant at least a passing comment in a state that whose capitol we share with the former confederacy. If we are being truly self-reflective, which do you think has more impact on young people in VA today and their futures— the Virginia charter for religious freedom, or legal segregation/redlining? it isn’t that any reasonable teacher would omit these topics, of course that is not the case. But it would seem to me that the point of these standards is not to be a play by play of every unit in the curriculum, but to highlight and frame important topics to ensure that kids in VA are getting a complete and useful historical education and critical thinking skills. The reality is that in the modern workplace, no matter whether it is blue collar, white collar, some kind of gig economy thing like mark warner wants to do for some reason, every student will someday encounter racial discourse and dynamics. To handle this appropriately they need to know the basic history. I understand that deciding how to frame these topics is contentious, but the least you all could do is to have that conversation. On a similar note, it is probably worth mentioning the pre-revolutionary war political and economic dynamics and the fact that much of this was related to labor or a desire to cleanse indigenous people off of as much land as possible with zero accountability even to the british which in that arena is a pretty low bar. on second thought that might not help small businesses to profit more so maybe you should keep it like it is.

in terms of historical events covered, why not also include the gulf wars? sure, korea and vietnam were important, but in terms of relevance to a person going out into the workforce, why not mention the time we facilitated the miracle of american democracy and free trade by kind of f*cking up a whole entire region of the world. I think that might put our current geopolitics and how the world as a whole views us into perspective a little bit better. That way when in the future student a graduate of va public education (or private, who knows where this is going anymore??) government subsidized obscure snack company wants to export teeny tiny little cheezits and not waste 500k in grant money from taxpayer dollars!!!!! good job putting the imf in there. maybe also include the fed, that feels important? i feel like small businesses want you to put the fed.

also theres no such thing as the power of ideas in the absence of material conditions and social relations to bring them to relevance. what is this. you people should understand this.  maybe both parties really are the same: HEGELIAN!!!! lol.