NC officials drop plan to focus on recent history

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s education agency is dropping a proposal to focus high school instruction of U.S. history on more recent decades.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Wednesday that the state Department of Public Instruction responded to critics who worried that the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers and the run-up
to the Civil War would be watered down or dropped.

Education administrators had proposed focusing the required high school U.S. history course on the years after Reconstruction while teaching the earlier events in elementary and middle school.

Fox News attacked the proposal, igniting national criticism that led state Senate leader Marc Basnight to oppose the idea last week.

Information from: The News & Observer

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)