But, will Kentucky’s students understand what this means?

It’s Independence Day, The Fourth of July, the day we annually celebrate the beginning of our country’s official separation from Great Britain.

But, are Kentucky’s public school students learning much about the important events connected to this annual day of separation?

The problem, as regular readers have heard us expound many times before (See here, here and here for a few examples), is Kentucky has some truly detail-poor public school social studies standards.

The lack of detail is highly apparent when we consider the events that led to the independence of what is now the United States.

For starters, Kentucky’s social studies standards don’t even introduce students to the revolution until the fifth grade.

For comparison, current standards in Massachusetts begin discussion of the revolution in Grade 3. In Louisiana, coverage of the revolution starts even earlier, in Grade 2. In Mississippi, students start to consider the revolution earlier still in Grade 1.

By the way, Kentucky’s vacuous standards never mention “Independence Day,” “The Fourth of July” or “4th of July.” The closest the standards get is a loose, iffy comment that instruction “may” include National Holidays. That doesn’t guarantee anything, and use of the term “may” is a fundamental error in phrasing for education standards, too. With that sort of terminology, maybe kids will learn it; maybe they won’t.

In notable contrast, Louisiana’s standards mention “Independence Day” in multiple places beginning in kindergarten.

Mississippi calls it the “4th of July” and also introduces it to Kindergarteners.

The Resource Supplement to Massachusetts’ standards lists it as Independence Day. This detailed listing is first mentioned in the main Massachusetts standards document under the kindergarten section.

Here’s another shocker. Mississippi, Louisiana and Massachusetts all specifically list “Lexington” and “Concord” as important revolutionary war battles that all students should learn about.

Kentucky’s largely empty, though verbose, 229-page document never mentions these important fights. Not at any grade level.

Kentucky doesn’t mention the Battle of Trenton, either, though Mississippi, Louisiana and Massachusetts all specifically required its coverage.

Kentucky is even silent about specifically covering the final big battle at Yorktown. None of the other three states I mentioned above omit this specific battle from their standards.

Kentucky’s standards overflow with flowery comments about how they will convey “conceptual knowledge and understanding,” “foster civic virtue,” “develop students' knowledge of important social studies concepts and their use of disciplinary thinking skills” and ultimately “help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”

But, how are you going to do that when your standards never mention virtually all of the major and important historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere and Thomas Paine? What role models will Kentucky’s teachers select, and will there be any consistency from classroom to classroom in the presentation of basic information about our country and its development that all of the state’s students deserve the opportunity to learn?

At present, mom and dad, there’s no guarantee your Kentucky student is going to learn much of anything about what Independence Day is all about in your public schools.

If you want your child to have this important background about the country where he or she lives, you will have to provide it or take action so our public school social studies standards get revised to make it clear that the Bluegrass State’s kids deserve much more than the vague and indeterminant promises in the state’s current social studies standards.

Fortunately, the Kentucky Academic Standards for Social Studies are going into a review cycle right now due to some new legal requirements in Senate Bill 1 from the 2022 Regular Legislative Session. While actual changes explicitly required are few, this would be a great time for the teachers who are charged to conduct this social studies standards review to take a deeper look and provide us with a product that isn’t vague, vacuous and even disrespectful.

And, those review teachers can look at a new social studies standards model to make that job a lot easier. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has just released a really handy set of model social studies standards they have titled “American Birthright.” This model is far superior to the verbose but unrevealing mush Kentucky’s teachers currently have to cope with. It would be great if the teachers charged to do the standards review take some serious time to go through the NAS product and liberally incorporate it into a new and far more useful set of social studies standards for Kentucky.

After all, independence and liberty are fragile things. If we don’t work hard to ensure our students understand the full history of our country – good things and bad – they won’t have the tools they really need to perform as citizen protectors of that independence going forward. And, that, were it to happen, would be a special tragedy for every July 4th yet to come.