Title: U.S. history: How teaching America's past varies across the country - CBS News
Headings: 50 states, 50 different ways of teaching America's past
50 states, 50 different ways of teaching America's past
Slavery and civil rights movement
Cause of the Civil War
Racism and white supremacy
Politics and other challenges
Role of teachers

Content: Historians have said it is only after the war when the institution of slavery was abolished that southerners began listing "states' rights" as a cause for the Civil War. Keven Ellis, the chair of the Texas State Board of Education, defended including "states' rights" in Texas' social studies standard, but pointed out it's in a different context than it previously was. "I think that even when you look at states' rights it focused around slavery," he said. " So what we are doing now is just being clear, that those states' rights that the South was fighting over, was states' rights for them to have slavery." In 2018, Texas reviewed its state social studies standards, leading to heated debates over whether states' rights should be considered as a cause of the Civil War—and whether defenders of the Alamo should be considered "heroic." Language around states' rights changed in the state standards, but calling defenders of the Alamo heroic remained. Racism and white supremacy
Recent movements like Black Lives Matter and the attack in Charlottesville helped jumpstart conversations about race and racism in America, but those conversations appear to be happening less frequently in the nation's classrooms. Less than half of the states in their social studies standards directly ask students to learn about racism. In some state standards, like in Pennsylvania, teachings on racial discrimination are introduced in elementary school. Students learn about "racial relations" and the "treatment of minority groups in history" in third grade.