A Lost Cause Rediscovered: African American Representation in South Carolina’s High School U.S. History Standards

• In Event: Roundtable Session 107
  In Roundtable Session: Curricula of Resistance Across the World

Abstract

This mixed-methods text analysis of African American representation in South Carolina’s high school U.S. History academic standards uses a multi-perspective critical conceptual framework to investigate the degree to which the standards engage students in historical thinking about African Americans in U.S. history and the ideology of the standards conveyed by linguistic choices. The analysis revealed that the standards mainly focused on slavery, the Civil War era and Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century. The reviewed standards typically promoted low-level factual recall rather than nuanced analysis and interpretation of historical evidence and deemphasized racial conflict in U.S. history in favor of a singular master narrative of national development.

Author

• Carl Bohning Anderson, The Pennsylvania State University