Education Week 5/25/2011 Reflection

Specialists Weigh Common Social Studies Standards:  This is an interesting article because it touches on some really delicate issues.  Anything having to do with History going across a wide area is going to have a drastically different effect.  One of the largest issues that comes to mind in recent memory is when Japanese-Chinese relations came to a head when I think Japanese history textbooks decided to neglect all of the atrocities that had occurred in NanKing and the rest of China when the Japanese invaded prior to their involvement in World War II.  I could definitely see some of the same issues here in the United States.  Any number of issues ranging from slavery to the succession in the south and other topics could draw the ire of states that border others that happen to adopt history lessons that residents of another state don't like.
here are a lot of benefits to adopting a common standard across the nation as we are beginning to do with math and english.  One of the things that I think of most are the kids from families that move from place to place with great frequency.  These are the kids that really suffer from the lack of a common standard in subject areas.  We talked in class at the beginning of the year about some of the folks who went from school to school and ended up learning many of the same things that they had learned at their old school.  Other times they would move to another school district and then find that they are woefully behind because the school district that they moved from had significantly lower standards than the school district they moved to.
It doesn't necessarily mean that all students across the country would have to learn the same thing all year.  I definitely think that it would be a good idea to have a decent amount of what the students learn should have some commonality.  Outside of that, each region of the country should try to incorporate their own specialty.  For instance, the Northwest should (and does) incorporate elements of history such as the Oregon trail, Lewis and Clark, a lot more Native American history and logging and everything else Pacific Northwest.  The Florida and Southeast could incorporate a lot more history involving the age of exploration (explorers such as Ponce de Leon searching for the fountain of youth which awesome!) and everything else related to the Southeast.  As a whole though, the general information regarding things other than local history should try to have as much commonality as possible.