It's the 'Longest Day' -- But Will Kentucky's students ever learn about it

Seventy-seven years ago on this date, a bunch of brave, mostly very young, Americans stormed the beaches in Normandy, France in a bloody action that signaled the beginning of the end for Nazi dominance in Europe.

It was D-Day – the allied invasion of Normandy, France – a day Nazi general Erwin Rommel predicted would be “The Longest Day.”

D-Day was one of the signature acts of what we now consider “The Greatest Generation,” and we at BIPPS honor those who made this supreme effort for freedom.

But, will future generations of Kentucky’s students know and honor this major battle and those who fought it?

Children in Kentucky’s elementary and middle schools will likely be left clueless because the current Kentucky Academic Standards for Social Studies don’t even mention World War II until high school and D-Day is never mentioned at all.

Over in Indiana, their social studies standards introduce World War II in the fourth grade.

Even Kentucky’s mentioning of World War II in the high school standards is rather vague and very incomplete.

The introduction to Kentucky’s high school social studies standards says students will:

“…analyze the role of economic and political influences on what it means to be an American domestically and in World War II.

The actual, lone standard that even mentions World War II just says:

HS.UH.CO.3          Analyze the role of the United States in global compromises and conflicts between 1890-1945 in the Spanish American War, World War I, the Interwar years and World War II.

That’s all that is said about this war. This treats the war more as an era in time instead of requiring discussion of the series of the events and sacrifices in this war that our children should learn about.

This is not the way another state with high quality social studies standards has done it. Massachusetts issued new social studies standards in 2018. The new Massachusetts standards include plenty of content regarding World War II such as “D-Day,” “Iwo Jima,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Bataan Death March” and a whole lot more. Massachusetts currently does not choose to follow some of the limited, fad ideas about process versus content that influenced Kentucky’s new proposal.

So, please pause to honor our Greatest Generation members today on the anniversary of one of the major battles that marked them for all time as worthy of that title.

Then, take time to really show your appreciation by letting your Kentucky legislators know you don’t want the state to have vacuous social studies standards that could very well be considered a dishonor by those who fought in World War II and by those who fought in every war since (The Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf Wars are completely unmentioned in Kentucky’s current standards, too). Legislators can begin fixing this problem by finding the regulation that adopted Kentucky’s Academic Standards for Social Studies deficient and thereby send this vacuous document back for a lot more work.