NC creates new US history class focusing on ‘founding principles’

High school students across the state can look forward to spending more quality time with America’s Founding Fathers. In fact, they won’t be able to graduate without doing so.

A bill signed into law by Gov. Bev Perdue last week, known as “The Founding Principles Act,” requires local school boards to develop a semester course focused on the founding philosophy of the U.S. government by the 2014-2015 school year.

The act states that students must understand Founders’ writings in order to preserve the country’s republican form of government.

The course will emphasize founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, in addition to concepts within the documents, including inalienable rights and the separation of powers. Students must pass the course to graduate.

Rebecca Garland, chief academic officer for the state’s Department of Public Instruction, said the course will not deviate from the department’s standards.

“Basically what is outlined is already in our standard course of study,” she said. “It’s not a departure from what we already do.”

Garland said U.S. history will be split into two courses, granting teachers more instruction time for the country’s founding during the first course. Civics courses will also be refocused to ensure the requirements are met, she said.

But the department retains a limited ability to oversee the courses. Local school boards will provide the curriculum, and funding for state-administered social studies exams was eliminated in the state budget.

Garland said teachers will have the most bearing on what students learn about the nuances of founding documents.

“How a teacher actually teaches it in his or her classroom is always going to be influenced by the ideology of the teacher,” she said. “We would hope that there wouldn’t be any radical interpretations of either extreme.”

Mitch Kokai, director of communications for the John Locke Foundation, a conservative research institute in the state, said the course will enable students to have a constructive dialogue about the nation’s founding.

“The fact that students are going to be exposed to each of these concepts in and of itself is a good thing, even if the instruction is skewed one way or the other,” he said.

Kokai said students in the past would have learned about America’s founding documents from their families and religious leaders in addition to schools, but that’s no longer the case.

In a poll conducted by the Daily Beast earlier this year, only 12 percent of Americans could name one of the authors of the Federalist Papers. Sixty-five percent incorrectly stated the purpose of the Constitutional Convention.

The act also permits schools to post documents that influenced the development of the U.S. legal system, including the Ten Commandments. Displays of religious documents must be accompanied by a sign quoting the First Amendment, according to the bill.

William Marshall, a UNC law professor with expertise on church and state issues, said the display’s context would be considered if it was challenged in court.

“The Establishment Clause is very imprecise,” he said. “I think that the court would look at how it’s implemented.”

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