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Our View
Proposed social science standards need overhaul
Duluth News Tribune,  Sunday, September 28, 2003

Minnesota's education commissioner plans to take proposed new social science standards for public schools to the Legislature in February.

We like a focus on foundations of the United States -- such as the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The story of the United States is progress toward ideals, always striving for a more perfect union. But the skewed interpretation of these foundations in the proposed standards is very troubling.

These standards need major reworking, not just tinkering before the Legislature approves them.

Page after page is loaded with ideologically charged "code words." We have space here for only a few.

[COMMENT: "Code word" for what? This is nonsense. The Duluth News
Tribune never says what they're supposed to be code words for. These
standards don't talk in code. They say what they mean. The Duluth News
Tribune has a conspiracy complex. They need to tell people what these
supposed code words are supposed to mean.]

Ordered liberty
Under the proposed standards, students are required to know that the Constitution implements a government founded on the principle of "ordered liberty." Yet the Constitution talks about securing the "blessings of liberty" -- not the "blessings of ordered liberty."

The phrase "ordered liberty" has been around in religious right circles for some time, but its most recent incarnation has been in Attorney General John Ashcroft's speeches for the "war on terrorism." In his speech on ordered liberty in Duluth in August, Ashcroft said: "Ordered liberty is the structure that, by directing and constraining the actions of individuals, allows us each the freedom to achieve the potential that is within us." Is this really the best statement of what our 200-year-old Constitution is about?

Surely there are better, more interesting things about the U.S. Constitution to have students learn.

The Declaration of Independence talks about rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" -- not to "life, ordered liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

[COMMENT: Ordered liberty" -- the word "ordered" is certainly not central to the
standards. What is their problem? Liberty has order. What's new? It is
descriptive. Would they argue that liberty is chaos or anarchy? Exactly
what is the problem with order in liberty?}

Which brings us to another point. The proposed standards underplay key phrases in the Declaration of Independence -- "all men are created equal" and "consent of the governed" -- but require students to engage in complicated exegesis on the differences between "happiness" and the "pursuit of happiness." This is silliness.

Dual sovereignty
The proposed standards require students to learn the principle of "dual sovereignty" between states and federal government. Yet the U.S. Constitution begins, "We, the people" -- not "we, the states" or "we, the national government." In United States, the people are sovereign. State governments are not sovereign. The federal government is not sovereign. The standards should reflect this.

"Dual sovereignty" is a term used by people trying to resurrect the idea of "states' rights," who see state and federal governments as "foreign" to each other, who dislike the role of the federal government as it has developed since the Civil War.

[COMMENT: "Dual sovereignty" means federalism. Textbooks use it all the time, along with the term "dual federalism" to mean "the belief that having separate and equally powerful levels of government is the best arrangement." (American Government, Roots and Reform, Allyn and Bacon, p. 65) "Dual federalism holds that the national government should not exceed its enumerated powers expressly set out in the Constitution." It's referring to the 9th and 10th
amendments to the Constitution which reserve powers to the
state that are not specifically delegated to the federal government.
Does that need to be resurrected? Is it buried?]

Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787
Most people understand these ordinances as establishing the principle of admitting new states on equal terms with the original 13 states. They divided lands west of the 13 states into self-governing territories and set requirements for statehood. They provided public land for schools, outlawed slavery, guaranteed civil liberties and set land grant sizes and prices. Ultimately, five states were created -- Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The land lying between the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers was incorporated into Minnesota.

The proposed standards require students to know how the ordinances of 1785 and 1787 "privatized national resources" and "transferred federally owned lands into private holdings, townships and states." That certainly is an odd description.

[COMMENT: Before the The Northwest Ordinance, that territory belonged to
the federal government. There's nothing odd about the description
of how that federal land was transferred out of its possession into
that of the states, townships and private holdings.}

This is only the 18th century. In the 19th century, there's the Civil War, westward expansion and policies toward American Indians. In the 20th century, the story of how the Declaration of Independence ideal "all men are created equal" came to be extended to women and blacks is terribly underplayed.

Then there are smaller issues. Students have to spend lots of time memorizing the battles and generals of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War that might be better spent learning what the issues on all sides were all about.

[COMMENT: Knowledge is good. the Duluth News Tribune is denigrating the acquisition of knowledge, rather than the inculcation of their worldview. The Profile of Learning was rejected by the public (by electing a Governor and legislature) to re-establish knowledge-based education in Minnesota. ]

This is not even to mention the huge gaps in the Minnesota history standards. Those standards are very weak.

[COMMENT: There are some gaps in the standards. That's why this hearing process is happening. The Duluth News Tribune ought to suggest what should be included and stop whining that their Profile is gone.

In short, the social science standards need a major overhaul. Send them back for a re-write.

What You Can Do
The Minnesota Department of Education holds a public hearing on the proposed social science standards 7-9 p.m. Monday at Cloquet Senior High School, 1000 18th St., Cloquet.

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