Educators and parents protest proposed social studies standards

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) - The standards proposed by Gov. Kristi Noem’s administration has attracted controversy ever since the state scrapped an original proposal by South Dakota educators and outsourced much of the work to a conservative, Christian college out of Michigan, according to the Associated Press.

Some critics believe that Noem is politicizing education and that the proposed standards ignore large sections of black and Native American history in an attempt to present a “white-washed” version of American history.

Still, others say that the standards promote rote memorization over critical thinking and that it’s not right to exclude educators from this matter.

“Parents and teachers were not involved in this set of proposed social studies standards, and that’s an issue because the parents and teachers are the ones that’ll be living these standards. Another issue we have with the standards is a lot of them are misplaced within the grade bands and our younger students will be learning things like politics and warfare that are just not appropriate for their age group,” said Rapid City, teacher and parent, Jennifer Macziewski.

Earlier this week, Noem announced that she would not be re-appointing Aberdeen Public School Superintendent Becky Guffin as Board of Education Standards Chair replacing her with Sioux Falls businessman Steve Perkins.

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