Arizona Superintendent Diane Douglas' Proposed Standards Generate Controversy
On Monday, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas went before the Arizona State Board of Education to propose new standards developed by Hillsdale College, a private Christian college in Michigan.
The standards would apply for students in grades K-12 and include new instruction in Latin for 7th-graders, 1st-graders learning “moral philosophy” and could impact new, proposed science standards which are still in process. Douglas has said she’d like the state board to vote on adoption of the Hillsdale standards at their Oct. 22 meeting.
"I think it's a classical education. I think it's an education that will prepare our kids for wherever they want to go in the future, whether it's college or whether it's a career," she said."They still need to have a level of education to be successful in this country. We've stopped caring about making kids citizens and giving them the knowledge they need to be successful as citizens in this country. It's become all about what's your career going to be."
But not everyone’s on board with the proposed standards — Eileen Merritt is one of them. she teaches at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers’ College at ASU and joined The Show to talk about her concerns.