Islam will be taught in seventh grade under new draft standards
Students will continue to learn the origin and central features of Islam in middle school under new draft standards proposed by the Tennessee State Board of Education.
The teachings of Islamic culture and history have been a subject of controversy among some parents across the state. There has been a strong backlash to the standards, as they were previously written due to what some described as an effort to “indoctrinate students.”
But the changes to the standards for all grades, now under review, are meant to simplify and cut the content teachers are expected to teach students in any given grade, said Laura Encalade, director of policy and research.
The changes are part of a social studies standards review for all grades started at the beginning of the year.
“No cuts targeted one area of history or one religion, but make the standards more manageable for more targeted instruction in any given year,” Encalade said.
In total, the department’s social studies review team has cut down the number of seventh-grade standards, where Islam is taught, from 75 to 67.
The process has included a name change of standards under the “Islamic World, 400 A.D/C.E.–1500s” to “Southwest Asia and North Africa: 400-1500s C.E.” Some references to the “Islamic World” have been changed to “Africa.”
“I would say that is for consistency sake,” Encalade said. “[The educator advisory team] rooted that change to geographic locations.”
And under the new draft standards, students are asked to learn the origins, spread and central features of Islam. These include the founder Mohammad, sacred texts the Quran and the Sunnah and basic beliefs like monotheism and The Five Pillars. The diffusion of Islam, its culture and Arabic language are also still included in the standards.
But some of the standards that asked students to go in-depth about religions, including Christianity and Islam, have been removed, according to review of the standards by The Tennessean. The number of changes are slight, with some references integrated into standards elsewhere.
“Overall, some of the streamlining was trying to take in account that standards weren’t age-level appropriate or went into too much detail,” Encalade said “We wanted to reduce the minutia and focus on what are the key concepts to really develop a strong sense of how oral history developed and how different historical events progressed.”