NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Major milestones in the civil rights movements for minorities and women are among a slew of Tennessee historical events, names and places that would no longer be required learning under a proposed overhaul of the social studies curriculum.
Other items dropped from the draft changes to the lesson plans would include the Cherokee origins of the state's name, why Tennessee is known as the Volunteer State, details of a labor insurrection among coal miners in the 1890s and several major Civil War battles fought around the state.
Tennessee State Historian Carroll Van West in a letter to the review committee urges members to abandon the changes that he says "constitute a whole scale change in what students will learn about their history, their communities, and state."