Regarding the April 21 Metro article “Va. approves school history standards”:
A cursory review of the new Standards of Learning reveals that the Virginia Education Departmant has chosen to perpetuate a 158-year-old injustice by continuing to leave Gen. George Henry Thomas out of the state’s required history curriculum.
The department deserves credit for adding Gen. Winfield Scott, as well as William Harvey Carney and Powhatan Beaty, African American soldiers from Virginia, to the Standards of Learning. But Thomas stands out for his decisive impact as a military leader during the Civil War, for his postwar contributions to protecting the civil rights of freedmen and for the personal price he paid for refusing to betray the Union. Not only did his Virginia relatives refuse to speak to him again, but none of his blood relatives attended his funeral.
Hopefully, when Virginia school history standards are reviewed again, the Virginia Education Departmant will do more to ensure that Virginia remembers all of its history.
I appreciated the April 22 editorial about the Virginia Standards of Learning and the process involved in getting them, “Virginia survives its school standards fight.” But why did the editorial say that there has to be a better way? It seems to me the various sides negotiated a solution to a very contentious issue — one that many jurisdictions are not able to resolve. What would be a better process? Leaving it to the “experts”? That is what got us into this mess in the first place. I think Virginia earned an A-plus.
