Israel declared its independence on this date in 1948 – But don’t expect Kentucky’s kids to learn anything about it or the modern middle east, either

Believe it or not, Kentucky’s horrible standards for social studies never mention anything about Israel. In fact, the word “Israel” never appears in them.

Also, there is nothing in the standards about any of the multiple Arab-Israeli Wars, either.

Even if you look up the term “Middle East” in the standards, the only mentions involve ancient history up to 1,600 AD. Despite the fact that Middle East history is important and that importance extends to the current day, nothing more recent is covered in the standards. That includes no mention of modern US involvement in several wars in the region.

This gets even more problematic as things are heating up again for Israel. Meanwhile, Kentucky’s students are just going to be left there wondering what all of this is about, and probably falling for incomplete if not outright wrong stories as a result.

Clearly, the inadequacies in the state’s social studies standards have real consequences, and our students deserve a much better product.

Actually, this could be stopped really quickly. Legislators have the ability to recall the regulation that adopted these atrocious standards and find that regulation deficient at any time, even out of session. That action would send these terrible standards back for more work.