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The Board of Education held hearings last week on a proposal to revise Virginia’s history standards.

The new standards, drafted in place of those from former Governor Ralph Northam’s Secretary of Education Atif Qarni, remove the “woke,” aspirational parts of the document and focus on actual history. The Board voted to have further revisions before a final decision.

The new standards before the Board of Education are an immeasurable improvement over the woke garbage Atif Qarni’s team created.

In the earliest parts of the Qarni draft, the standards were loaded with left-wing, collectivist changes.

For example, the Qarni standards removed “working hard in school” as an example of good citizenship and replaced it with “working hard to contribute their time and talents to their communities.”

It also watered down the content, removing a requirement to locate all 50 states on a map, among others.

It removed specific mention that “The Holocaust is an example of prejudice, discrimination, and genocide that targeted Jews and other groups.” It removed a section discussing “the Bill of Rights outline American civil liberties.”

Sections on classical Mediterranean cultures remove significant understandings of Greek culture and replace them with Persia.

At least one teachers’ group has complained that the standards require too much from middle-and elementary school students — and that many of them would have to change the way they do their jobs.

The Loudoun NAACP held a press conference Thursday complaining about parts of the standards that were deleted. A simple Control-F search of the document finds that those parts have not, in fact, been deleted.

We cannot change history, but we can learn from it, so we do not repeat it. I thank our Governor for caring so deeply about Virginia Education and sharing my vision of Virginia being the best state for education. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Del. Tommy Wright can be reached via email at DelTWright@House.Virginia.gov or (804) 698-1061.