Portrait of Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blythe c. 1766. Image courtesy Wikipedia.
In one of the most famous letters in American history, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John in March of 1776, imploring him to "remember the ladies," as he and the other delegates attending the Second Continental Congress considered the weighty question of independence from Great Britain.
John Adams and the other delegates who signed the Declaration of Independence the following July ignored Abigail's demand for equal rights for women, and it would take another 144 years for women to finally be granted the right to vote by the Nineteenth Amendment.
Now it seems that the Virginia Board of Education has also failed to "remember the ladies" in its latest revision of the Standards of Learning (SOL) for students taking high school American history. This third edition of the SOLs for U.S. History, like the previous two before it, barely mentions the contributions made by women to the critical events in our nation's past.
In fact, only seven women are specifically included in the so-called "Essential Knowledge" part of the state's official Curriculum Framework for U.S. History which takes effect next year.
Women whose names appear in the new SOLs include Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, and Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Others include Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sacajawea, the Indian Guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition is the only other woman identified by name in the document.
"Rosie the Riveter" also appears in the Framework, but she is a composite figure representing women on the home front during World War Two and is should not be counted as an actual person.
This is the sum total of the important women in American History that our high school students are required to study according to the official state standards!
Now consider a partial list of women who, by any measure, should have been included in the SOLs but whose names do not appear:
Pocahontas, the Powahattan Indian princess who saved the life of John Smith and probably the colony of Jamestown.
Anne Hutchinson who spoke out against the Puritan oligarchy in Massachusetts and was exiled and subsequently killed by Indians, becoming an early martyr for the cause of religious freedom.
Betsy Ross who is credited with sewing the original stars and stripes while manufacturing ammunition for the patriots in the basement of her Philadelphia home.
Dolley Madison, the wife of James Madison, who set the standard for all subsequent First Ladies and rescued Washington's portrait from the White House before it was burned by the British during the War of 1812.
Harriet Tubman, the runaway slave who led countless slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad and was known as the "moses of her people."
Clara Barton, the Civil War nurse who established the American Red Cross after the war.
Jane Addams whose work on behalf of immigrants in Chicago and the cause of world peace earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
Frances Perkins, the first woman member of the U.S. Cabinet, appointed Secretary of Labor by Franklin Roosevelt.
Eleanor Roosevelt, perhaps the greatest American woman of the twentieth century and the first U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Rosa Parks, the African-American woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.
Ironically, Abigail Adams, who admonished her husband (and us) to "remember the ladies" is also left out of the Virginia Standards of Learning!
Such glaring omissions from the Virginia Standards of Learning make a mockery of history and represent an insult to those of us in the teaching profession who believe that the study of the past is vital to understanding the present.
Worse, the gender bias reflected in the history Standards is an insult to the young women who make up at least 50% of the students in my classes. They - and all students - need and deserve to know what women did for this country and that the contributions of women have been every bit as important as the contributions of men to the story that is America.
As teachers, then, let us correct this embarrassment by the Board of Education and truly "remember the ladies" in our history classes this year - and not just the few who made the official list.
