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Locals speak out against social studies standards

PORTALES — No one who spoke at a Portales Municipal School board work session Monday had much good to say about the New Mexico Public Education Department’s proposed standards for teaching Social Studies from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Wade Fraze, a history teacher at Portales High School and an outspoken advocate for conservatism, believes that word choices and subject matter in the proposed standards demonstrated they are based on Critical Race Theory, which he said is steeped in progressive or liberal ideas.

Another person who spoke called the standards “indoctrination” into a false way of thinking.

District Superintendent Johnnie Cain, however, was more concerned about the heavy use of terms like “identity” that he said are not defined, and whether the standards required levels of learning too advanced for the grade levels to which they are applied.

He was also concerned that many of the goals and objectives of the standards are controversial and may not reflect community standards.

Cain guided discussion for the workshop by scrolling through the standards, pointing out what he found objectionable and inviting school board and audience members to offer comments on the standards as they appeared on a projector screen.

The work session’s intent was not to produce a decision about how the district will respond to the PED on the standards. Cain said the board will have more discussion and decide on their response at their next meeting at 6 p.m. Nov. 8 in the school administration building.

Cain repeatedly questioned the meaning of terms like “identity,” “affinity group,” and “primary” and “secondary” sources, which are used frequently in the standards.

He also expressed concern that the word “systemic” implied an incorrect assumption that all of certain groups, such as whites and government officials, were responsible for some developments, as in “systemic inequity” and “systemic oppression.”

Fraze said the standards’ use of the words “systemic,” “inequity” instead of “inequality,” and “oppression” were derived from Marxism.

“Inequity,” Fraze said, implies equal outcomes, whereas “inequality” applies to opportunities. Equal outcomes, he said is a goal of Marxism.

Oppression of the poor and minorities to keep them down, is a Marxist theme, he added.

Imposing identities, whether religious, racial or sexual orientation, is “putting people in groups and telling them how they should act,” Fraze said.

The standards are designed to “emphasize the differences rather than the similarities” between people and create division, Fraze said.

Cain was also concerned that historical attitudes should be taught in a way that recognizes the perceptions of the times, rather than from current perspectives.

“A lot of things that were OK in 1855 and even 50 years later” are rejected today, Cain said.

An example, he said, is current demands in New York to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson, one of the chief architects of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, because he was a slave owner.

Cain said it would be difficult to teach New Mexico history from the viewpoints required in the standards because “we have one history book and it’s 40 years old.”

Teachers were particularly concerned about online availability of historic maps online. They could not be found, they said, even after thorough searches.

Cain also questioned how the scope of U.S. history required for a single year could be taught in that time when history classes he taught seldom got beyond World War II.

Cain and audience members also questioned standards that could lead to controversy.

One standard, for example, asks teachers to guide classes to “brainstorm ways in which New Mexicans might heal from past and current injustices.”

Fraze responded that because he is part Irish and because the Irish were treated badly at some points in history, he would be allowed to nurse a grudge even now.

The standard, he said, injects an attitude in students that says “I’m downtrodden and oppressed and I’m going to make them pay.”

 
 
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