Gay Rights & Climate Change May Leave Social Studies In Schools

The Michigan schooling system may be losing terms in Social Studies classes as the standards of which students will be learning may be changing. Subjects like references to Roe v. Wade, Gay Rights & Climate Change, and even the word "democratic" in the term ""core democratic values." There will also be a trim in references to the role of the NAACP. This comes from Republican state Sen. Patrick Colbeck and a group of conservatives who are attempting to make the first change in standards to Michigan Social Studies in school since 2007.

Bridgemi.com reports that currently the changes are in a public commenting stage and the State Board of Education expect to hear the feedback from those comments in August. According to their website the following changes are the most notable in the proposed change:

• References to the Ku Klux Klan are decreased, from two to a single reference in eighth-grade, along with a mention in a list of optional examples high school history teachers can consider when teaching about social issues between 1890 and 1930. (Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story only listed the optional example mention of the KKK in the proposed standards.)
• Five existing references to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have been cut, with a lone reference remaining in a section on the 1920s on its “legal strategy to attack segregation.”
• The two references to gays and lesbians in the current standards, in sections dealing with the fight for rights for minority groups, have been deleted.
• Both references in the current standards to Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case legalizing abortion, are removed.
• A high school standard about the expansion of civil rights and liberties for minority groups cut references to individual groups, including immigrants, people with disabilities and gays and lesbians. The new proposal includes teaching “how the expansion of rights for some groups can be viewed as an infringement of rights and freedoms of others.” Colbeck told Bridge he added that phrase.
• References to climate change are cut in the proposed standards, with the impact of man on global warming limited to an optional example sixth-grade teachers can use when discussing climate in different parts of the planet. (The standards retain a more generic reference to teaching how "human actions modify the environment.")  In notes Colbeck sent to the state board, the former aerospace engineer argues that climate change is “not settled science."

Do you feel like they're making proper changes or do you feel this change is all a part of an agenda?

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