>There are times when the logic employed by those who write the SOLs escapes those of us who have to teach them.
>
>James Brothers, RPA
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Indeed.  Which raises the interesting point of just who, exactly, writes the SOLs?

I understand that there has been some input by historians and archealogists.  But given the manifest problems in the SOLs, its hard to imagine that those who crafted the SOLs gave their input all that much weight.

As someone who has struggled on multiple occasions to impose some sort of definition to just what state history *is*, I can attest to the difficulty that Virginia history presents.  The SOLs do not provide an especially cogent or coherent guide to the content of state history, and any effort to use them as the narrative guideline for a course will rapidly run into conceptual difficulty.  If our elementary, middle, and high school teachers have to "teach to the test," then they are faced with a real challenge, since there just is not any real narrative coherence to the version of Virginia history presented in the SOLs.

I'd be very interested to know how our colleagues in k-12 education manage this task?  What sorts of print resources (I know what is available by the web reasonably well) do you use?  Who produces them?

All best,
Kevin


Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University