Social Studies Standards Hearing Oral Testimony of Julie Quist

December 20, 1012

Testimony concerning the proposed revised Minnesota Social Studies Standards
Julie Quist

My name is Julie Quist. I am a mother of ten grown children and a grandmother of many more. I was born in southeastern Minnesota, and I currently live in southern Minnesota near St. Peter.

John Adams, one of the most well-known of the founders of our Republic and our second President, said: “Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.”

He also said: “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.”  He understood education in the principles of liberty to be key to preserving that liberty.

With those words in mind, I would like to call attention to a serious flaw within these proposed new Social Studies standards which, I believe, goes to the heart of many other objections within the document.

Inalienable rights are given short shrift. In fact, inalienable rights are almost completely erased from existence within the new standards. The rights that are identified in the Declaration of Independence and in the U.S. Constitution come from the revolutionary acknowledgement that “All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” This exceptional idea—God-given rights, freedom—has impacted millions of people throughout the world. It has brought masses of people to our shores “yearning to breathe free.”

This central idea within the Declaration of Independence articulates our identity, that which binds us together as a nation and defines what uniquely it means to be an American. Our country, our Republic, isn’t united by race. We aren’t united by religion. We are united by our civil creed that rocked the world in the 18^th century—All men are created equal, rights to life, to liberty and to property—rights that governments may and do often violate, but that remain our rights nonetheless.

Throughout these standards, instead, rights are continually referred to as “individual” rights. A world of difference exists between individual rights which are created by government, which may be legislated away, and rights with which we came into this world. Civics Standard #5 states that citizenship rights are created by laws. While there is certainly some truth to that statement, the standards never distinguish what rights are inalienable, rights protected by government, not bestowed by government.

Will we really leave inalienable rights behind in our standards? Will we really refuse to teach that revolutionary American core of freedom to the next generations?

Only once in the entire set of standards and benchmarks is there a single reference to inalienable rights, and that is merely an example. This is astounding and raises serious questions about the overall philosophical grounding of the education community today. Do they believe our rights are inalienable? And if so, would these not be central to the study of Civics and our nation’s history?

This disappearance of the central idea of inalienable rights shows up in a number of standards, such as the Civic Standard #2 which discusses our civic identity: “The civic identity of the United States is shaped by historical figures, places and events, and by key foundational documents and other symbolically important artifacts.”

While students must know the symbols, the traditions, the songs, they never are to understand, in this standard or its benchmarks, what those symbols, songs, and traditions symbolize. The idea of liberty, that idea that we are all created equal and with inalienable rights that government cannot violate, is the heart of patriotic artifacts, symbols, the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance. This standard teaches students only the externals and never the meaning, robbing our children of their precious heritage of freedom.

The lack of recognition of the central idea of the foundation of the United States of America, inalienable rights that are God-given, appears to color much else within this standards document. I leave it to others to identify them. A primary goal of Social Studies Standards and of education in general ought to be to transfer the American principles of freedom on to the next generation—not simply to prepare them for college and careers, and that should be stated clearly.

In summary, these revisions ought to go back to the drawing board, not adopted into Rule.

Thank you.