Comment on Mississippi College and Career Readiness Standards

Editor's Note: The National Association of Scholars (NAS) and the Civics Alliance work to ensure that every state has academic standards that promote first-rate education and protect school children from political indoctrination. We promote reform of content standards in every state, along the lines modeled by the Civics Alliance’s American Birthright: The Civics Alliance’s Model K-12 Social Studies Standards, and we have been asked by Mississippi citizens to comment on the proposed 2022 Mississippi College and Career Readiness Standards for Social Studies. We conclude that these proposed Standards should be substantially revised. 

We have sent the following letter to the Mississippi State Board of Education. Download the PDF here.

Mississippi State Board of Education
Department of Education
P.O. Box 771
Jackson, MS 39205-0771

October 24, 2022

Dear Mississippi State Board of Education,

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) and the Civics Alliance work to ensure that every state has academic standards that promote first-rate education and protect school children from political indoctrination. We promote reform of content standards in every state, along the lines modeled by the Civics Alliance’s American Birthright: The Civics Alliance’s Model K-12 Social Studies Standards,¹ and we have been asked by Mississippi citizens to comment on the Department of Education’s proposed 2022 Mississippi College and Career Readiness Standards for Social Studies (Standards).² We conclude that the Standards require substantial improvement—and that this improvement should be conducted by recruiting an independent commission to redraft new social studies standards.

The Proposed Standards: Significant Accomplishments

The proposed Standards possess significant accomplishments.

• The Standards generally provide factual content, rather than imposing “skills” instruction that is frequently counter-productive and always reduces the time available to learn factual knowledge.
• Large portions of the Standards, although not all, are written in unpoliticized language.
• The Standards frequently include factual specificity, such as the names of individuals, laws, and events.
• The Standards provide a good framework for European and United States history, although frequently keyed to provide a vague and hasty overview.

While our critiques of the Standards are substantial, we believe that the Department of Education did a great deal of good work in preparing these Standards.

The Proposed Standards: Critiques and Recommendations for Revision

The Standards, unfortunately, do possess significant problems. We list our critiques below and accompany each critique with a recommendation for how to revise the Standards.

• Radical Dependence: Frameworks such as the National Council for the Social Studies’ College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards replace social studies pedagogy with identity politics and radical activism pedagogies such as Critical Race Theory and Action Civics.³ The Department will radicalize Mississippi’s social studies education if it depends on such national frameworks. 
  Recommendation: The Department should detach the Standards from such radicalized frameworks as the National Council for the Social Studies’ College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards.
• Distorted Civil Rights Strand Definition: The Standards has added a new Civil Rights strand, with equal status with History, Civics, Economics, and Geography. The Standards justifies this by reference to MS Code § 37-13-193 (2013), but the statutory language does not justify the Department of Education’s revision to the Standards. The Code states straightforwardly that “The State Board of Education may make civil rights and human rights education a part of the K-12 curriculum of instruction in Mississippi public schools.” The Department has responded with this extraordinary language:

Civil rights education, as understood by the writers of this framework, is defined as the mastery of content, skills and values that are learned from a focused and meaningful exploration of civil rights issues (both past and present), locally, nationally and globally. This education should lead learners to understand and appreciate issues such as social justice, power relations, diversity, mutual respect, and civic engagement. Students should acquire a working knowledge of tactics engaged by civil rights activists to achieve social change. Among these are: demonstrations, resistance, organizing, and collective action/unity. The content was incorporated as a content strand throughout the entire K-12 framework at the recommendation of the Mississippi Civil Rights Commission. (p. 12 [Strands])

The writers of the Standards are not justified in defining “civil rights education” as social justice, power relations, diversity, civic engagement, demonstrations, resistance, organizing, and collective action/unity. This is the basic vocabulary of the radical ideology sometimes referred to as Critical Race Theory, and of the vocational training in radical activism sometimes referred to as Action Civics. The Department of Education, departing unjustifiably from statutory language and legislative intent, has smuggled into the Standards an intellectual framework informed by Critical Race Theory and Action Civics.

Recommendation: The Department of Education should rewrite the definition of the Civil Rights Strand to remove all radical vocabulary and pedagogy. The Department also should rewrite the Standards entirely to remove all distortions imposed by this radicalized definition of Civil Rights education.

Recommendation: The Department of Education should replace the Civil Rights Strand with a broader strand devoted to Liberty, defined as:

The slow development and application of the ideals and institutions of liberty, partic­ularly those embodied in constitutional self-government. Students generally should be able to identify the ideals, institutions, and individual examples of human liberty, individualism, religious freedom, and republican self-government; assess the extent to which civilizations have fulfilled these ideals; and describe how the evolution of these ideals at different times and in different places has contributed to the formation of modern American ideals.⁴

The Liberty strand should include the development of American civil rights as a core component in the development of liberty in America and in Mississippi.

• Documents of Liberty: The Standards include a few of the documents of liberty, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but include no sustained attention to teaching America’s documents of liberty—or, more broadly, to using primary sources in history and civics instruction.

Recommendation: The Department of Education should add a Strand of Documents of Liberty. The Department of Education should incorporate a series of named documents into the Standards and integrate coverage of them throughout the Standards. The series should include at least the 24 documents specified by Kentucky in KRS 158.196, which provide an excellent model for Mississippi. (Appendix 1: The 24 Documents and Speeches Specified in KRS 158.196.) Ideally the series also should include a broader selection of documents, keyed to the history of the intellectual background of the Founding Documents and the history of the United States. (Appendix 4: Recommended Historical Documents.) The Department of Education should then publish a Documents of Liberty Reader, and provide lesson plans and professional development, to facilitate teachers’ ability to provide instruction in the Documents of Liberty.

Recommendation: The Department of Education should consider a larger integration of primary sources into their Standards, such as are provided by American Birthright.

• Distorted Geography Strand Definition: The Standards’ Geography Strand definition prompts teachers to replace factual content with empty “skills” and radical activism.

The geography strand equips students with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives of world geography to engage in ethical action regarding self, other people, other species, and Earth’s diverse cultures and natural environments. Students learn how to use geographic thinking and information to make well-reasoned decisions and to solve personal and community problems. (p. 12 [Strands])

Recommendation: The Standards should replace the Geography Strand with this language: “Geographers and students of geography learn how to make and understand maps, inform themselves of the natural and political contours of the world, and use this knowledge to illuminate their understanding of economics and history.”⁵ The Standards should be revised throughout to reinforce coverage of factual knowledge of the geography of Mississippi, the United States, and the world, and to remove all material that prompts toward radical activism.

• Compressed World History. The Standards provide a hasty survey of the history of Western Civilization and very abbreviated treatment of World History outside of Europe.

Recommendation: The Standards should replace the current World History sequence with a required Western Civilization sequence in middle school and high school, which provides the coherent narrative of the ideals and institutions of liberty which formed America. This Western Civilization sequence should extract the existing materials on the history of Western Civilization from the current World History instruction, and expand upon them to provide greater detail, especially of the histories of liberty, faith, science, and technology. The Standards would especially benefit from historical coverage of two historical sequences now entirely absent:

1. the Renaissance rediscovery and elaboration of the concepts of liberty, individualism, republicanism, and tolerance;⁶ and
2. England’s history of liberty from Henry VIII (misidentified in the Standards as Henry VII) to John Wilkes, including the growth of parliamentary power, the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, legal freedoms such as habeus corpus, and the expansion in England of a culture and society animated by the ideals of freedom.

Recommendation: The Standards should create a distinct World History sequence, which provides fuller coverage of Asian, African, and Latin American history.

• Inadequate American Cultural History. The Standards provides too little material on America’s common culture. The United States History Standard (pp. 90-102) only mentions American cultural history to refer to the Lost Generation and the Harlem Renaissance. (p. 95 [US History: 1877 to the Present: USH 5.2, USH 5.8]). Mississippi students should learn far more American cultural history, from Edgar Allan Poe to Tin Pan Alley to Georgia O’Keeffe.⁷ The Standards’ African American Studies Standard (pp. 129-35), which includes cultural history in 7 of its 9 separate items, provides a useful model for how the United States History sequence should integrate cultural history.

Recommendation: The Standards should integrate coverage of the history of America’s common culture throughout its United States History sequence.

• Incorrect Usage of “Democracy”: The Standards consistently refer to America as a democracy rather than a republic. This usage was challenged in the previous public comments (“Teach that America is a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy.” [3.Cl.1, USG. 1]), but rejected by the Department, on the grounds that “While the United States is a republic where representatives are elected to make laws on behalf of constituents, it is commonly referred to as a democracy.” (USG 1). The Department misstated the case: the United States is polemically referred to as a democracy, and it is usage with important intellectual and political consequences—not least because America was established as a republic with limited government and separation of powers precisely to prevent the majoritarian tyranny that the Founding Fathers feared would accompany pure democracy. The Standards itself, for example, asks students to “Identify principals [sic] of democracy within the Declaration of Independence” (p. 34 [3.CR.1]), without asking them to identify principles of liberty. The Standards likewise directs students to “Examine the influence of democratic values on the lives of citizens” (p. 32 [3.CI.1]), rather than American values or values of liberty. The Standards’ definition of America as a democracy rather than a republic underwrites the abandonment of American values and liberty throughout the Standards.

Recommendation: The Standards should define America as a constitutional republic, and they should add or substitute liberty and American values wherever they refer to American democracy or democratic values.

• Distorted Mississippi Studies. Several public comments asked for mention of “MS State Constitution, Davis Secession, James K. Vardaman, Sovereignty Commission, Brown, Plessy” (U.S. History 7C.7, 7C.12, 7c.13). The Department responded: “No change needed. Content covered in Mississippi Studies.” While Mississippi Studies does mention successive Mississippi Constitutions, it mentions neither Jefferson Davis nor James K. Vardaman by name, although it does mention individuals for virtually every other period of Mississippi history (Mississippi Studies, pp. 77-81). This absence substantially weakens Mississippi Studies.

Recommendation: The Standards will not endorse slavery, secession, or segregation if it mentions these figures by name, or those of other famous Mississippians associated with these causes. The Department of Education should revise the Mississippi Studies Standards to include prominent Mississippians, regardless of their political beliefs.

• Distorted Minority Studies: Minority Studies includes several absences and distortions.
  • Polemical Despair: Minority Studies (pp. 165-69) mentions minority groups, marginalization, plight, discrimination, prejudice, scapegoating, inequalities, resistance, systemic inequality, microaggressions, cultural appropriation, and discrimination. At least three of these concepts are polemical falsehoods (systemic inequality, microaggressions, cultural appropriation), and the rest are severely unbalanced in the historical portrait they present, since they do not mention minority individuals, assimilation, cooperation, resilience, success, fair treatment, equality, accommodation, or common American identity.
  • Polemical Absences: Minority Studies does not mention notable American minorities, including Catholics, Mormons, Quakers, Amish, Cajuns, Irish, Germans, Italians, and Poles. The story of these minorities, and the extent of their assimilation into a common American identity, ought to be part of Mississippi’s Minority Studies.
  • Holocaust: The Minority Studies course oddly refers to the Holocaust without naming the victims: “Illustrate the major events, minority groups, and people associated with the Holocaust and its global impact.” (p. 168 [MIN.7]) The Minority Studies should explicitly mention at least Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled.

Recommendation: The Department should redraft the Minority Studies sequence entirely, and produce a version shorn of polemical despair and polemical absences.

• Miscellaneous Miscues. The Standards makes several smaller mistakes, which should be corrected.
  • History Strand. The Standards directs students to “investigate how the past shapes the present, how people and events have changed society through time, and how localized changes can impact the world power structure.” (p. 12 [Strands]) The Standards inappropriately assume that societies and power structures are the foundation of human history, when it is politics, faiths, and liberties. The Department should redraft the History Strand accordingly, and redraft the Standards to match this change.
  • Slaves/Enslaved: The Standards substitute the polemical term enslaved for slaves. Polemical jargon is inappropriate for Standards—and this jargon obscures a vital historical distinction between African Americans who were enslaved and those who were born slaves (or free men), between African Americans largely products of African culture and those increasingly partaking of and contributing to the American cultural complex of Christianity, ideals of liberty, and Anglo-American culture. The Standards should use the terms enslaved and slaves correctly.
  • African American Christianity: The Standards does not discuss African American Christianity explicitly, although they do mention Negro Spirituals (p. 73 [US History: Exploration to 1877 8.7]) and religious institutions such as the “AME Church in Philadelphia and other ‘Invisible Churches’” (p. 131 [AAS.3]). The Standards should mention the Christianization of African-American slaves and free men and the nature and development of African-American Christianity.
  • Communism: The Standards does not define Communist ideas, or their effect. The Standards directs students to learn how “Nazi ideas about race and nation led to the dehumanization and genocide of Jews in the Holocaust” (p. 87 [World History WH 9.2]); they also should direct students to learn how (for example) “Communist ideas about class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat led to the dehumanization of “class enemies” and genocide of the Ukrainians in the Holodomor.”
  • Explaining Away Conservativism: A public comment on United State History USH 10.1 astutely notes that “Revisions ask students to evaluate the conservative movement as a response to ‘social, economic, and environmental’ issues rather than appraising the issues.” The Department erred when it made no change in response to this comment. The Standards does not ask students to evaluate the Civil Rights movement, the women’s movement, or the environmental movement as responses to other developments. (p. 99 [United States History USH 9.3-5]) The Standards should treat the conservative movement in the same manner.
  • Economic Rights: The Standards assumes the existence of economic rights in the United States government course: “Identify the importance of economic rights and explain how they are secured.” (USG 8.7) Economic rights are a staple of progressive polemic, but they should not be assumed to exist. Nor should they be incorporated into the United States Government course, since our civil rights are political in nature, not economic. The Department should remove this item from the Standards.
  • United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: In Grade 6, Standard 6.14 (“Describe how civil rights and citizenship roles vary based on the culture and government of various nation-states.”) includes the objective “Compare and contrast the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Amendments with the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” (p. 52 [6.14.4]) The United Nations is not a nation-state, and human rights are not civil rights. The Department should remove this item from the Standards.
  • Impact: The Standards uses impact throughout, when they should use affect or effect. The Department should replace impact throughout.
• Revision Transparency: The Department of Education helpfully provided a redlined version of the Standards that transparently revealed the changes between the 2021 draft Standards and the 2022 proposed Standards. However, it did not provide a similar redlined version to reveal the changes from the 2018 Standards to the 2022 proposed Standards. The Department should provide redlined versions that provide such information as part of the future standards revision process.

Strategic Recommendations

We have provided the above recommendations for revision to the Department of Education, but we do not believe that social studies standards revision can or should be undertaken entirely by the Department. We make three strategic recommendations to the Department.

• Independent Commission. The Department received a great many thoughtful comments—which its personnel largely ignored, even when they were sensible. The Department evinced an attitude that was unresponsive to the Mississippi public, to which it should be accountable. We, therefore, recommend that the Department ask Mississippi’s policymakers to appoint an independent commission to redraft Mississippi’s social studies standards. Effective revision of the Standards must be carried out by a commission independent of the Department personnel.
• Licensure Requirements and Professional Development: The Department of Education also should update its licensure requirements and professional development to ensure that its teachers are equipped to teach curriculum that aligns with these Standards' new emphasis in historical documents.
• Statutory Reform: The Department of Education should ask state policymakers to enact laws that ensure proper social instruction in all Mississippi public K-12 schools.⁸

Conclusion

The Mississippi Department of Education’s proposed Standards possess significant virtues, but they also possess substantial shortcomings. The Department should revise the proposed Standards in detail as we have recommended in this public comment. We suggest that the Department examine our model American Birthright social studies standards, but we also suggest that Kentucky examine the fine alternate models of Louisiana and South Dakota. The Department also should request Mississippi policymakers to appoint an independent commission to redraft new social studies standards.

Photo by Pieter van de Sande on Unsplash