Every seven years, Virginia law requires a revision to Virginia schools educational standards. This seven-year cycle marked 2022 as a year for a new revision. So far, the curriculum change process has been tedious, as it coincidentally spans two gubernatorial administrations with opposing political viewpoints. Compounding these tensions is the growing partisanship related to education. As a result, the Youngkin administration’s new plans for education, particularly those related to the social sciences, have been heavily criticized. But despite the fact that the changes take place under the Youngkin administration, MLWGS history and government teacher Mr. Samuel Ulmschneider reminds us that his role in the changes is limited. “The Governor appoints the majority of members on the board of education... but even then those board members don’t write the curriculum... Underneath [the board] is a whole bunch of career staff... and those are the folks who actually go in and write the document.”

Breaking down the actual curriculum changes, they tend to be most significant in elementary school, and largely change the curriculum via exclusion. This exclusion of content is not completely unjustifiable, as the SOLs in 2015 were considered by many, in Ulmscheider’s words, to be “very ambitious, and put too much emphasis on content, and not enough on skill.” Therefore, a slimmer curriculum may even be a positive change.

The problem lies in the few areas where there are significant content changes. In particular, the representation of Native Americans has drastically changed, as they are no longer treated as indigenous but rather as America’s “first immigrants.” Furthermore, lessons examining Native American culture in isolation or in the modern day were scrapped, replaced by a focus on the “cooperation and conflict” between European and Native Americans. This is important because learning pre-colonial Native American history is vital to understanding their interactions with Europeans. The curriculum’s lack of focus on this leads to, in Mr. Ulmschneider’s words, “an incomplete understanding.”

Other major changes in the curriculum include a change in the countries focused on outside of America, removing the study of ancient China and Mali from elementary schools and replacing it with a greater focus on ancient Egypt. Additionally, the World History I SOLs no longer include a focus on either Russia or the Ottoman Empire, and the World History II SOLs no longer include a focus on analyzing and comparing concepts like colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, and racism. Throughout the curriculum, there is also a greater focus on patriotism and glorifying the founding fathers (in particular George Washington and James Madison). While these changes may sound drastic, the revised curriculum keeps far more than it changes. For instance, looking at World History I, Russia and the Ottomans only made up a week or two of lessons, hardly enough to have a major impact.

While the impact of these new standards on Virginia’s public schools is still unknown, they will have very little impact on the curriculum at Maggie Walker. After all, most Maggie Walker history courses are at the AP level (with curriculum frameworks and objectives designed by the College Board), and the Global Studies curriculum is designed entirely in-house. However, Ulmschneider points out “the biggest effect that these changes would have here at Maggie Walker would be a pipeline.” In essence, the incoming classes under this new curriculum would have a different knowledge pool and set of skills. Even so, the impact this has on students and teachers would be quite minor, especially in comparison to events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

One overlooked detriment of this whole curriculum process that Ulmscheider highlights is, “We have a teacher retention crisis in Virginia... Virginia is under threat of lawsuit from the federal government because we’re failing to effectively provide the resources that developmentally disabled and developmentally delayed students and students with mental health crises need... and when we’re spending our time running around with our hair on fire... we’re not dealing with other pretty important matters for the schools to deal with.” The Youngkin administration is not solely at fault for this, as the Northam administration was not exactly apolitical in their proposed social studies curriculum either. Their proposal mandated lessons on social justice, as well as scrapping the requirement for lessons on Christopher Columbus and Benjamin Franklin. Whether or not these topics should be mandated in schools is irrelevant to the fact that they contribute to a broader politicization of education, something that diverts crucial resources from other areas that desperately need them like mental health and teacher retention. Whether the struggle is worth the sacrifice is up to one’s own opinion, but it is worth noting that nothing happens in a vacuum, and there is a tangible detriment to the politicization of the revision process.