Pupil instruction: social science: genocide.

Existing law requires the State Department of Education to incorporate materials relating to civil rights, human rights violations, genocide, slavery, and the Holocaust into publications that provide examples of curriculum resources for teacher use, consistent with the subject frameworks on history and social science and other requirements. Under existing law, the Legislature encourages the incorporation of survivor, rescuer, liberator, and witness testimony into the teaching of human rights, genocide, and the Holocaust. Existing law establishes the Instructional Quality Commission and requires the commission to, among other things, recommend curriculum frameworks to the State Board of Education. This bill would require the commission to consider including the Armenian Genocide in the recommended history-social science curriculum framework when the history-social science curriculum framework is revised as required by law. The bill would specify that the Legislature encourages the incorporation of survivor, rescuer, liberator, and witness oral testimony into the teaching of human rights, the Holocaust, and genocide, including the Armenian, Cambodian, Darfur, and Rwandan genocides. The bill would define oral testimony to mean firsthand accounts of significant historical events presented in a specified format. The bill would provide that the Legislature encourages certain actions relating to the instruction of genocide, including, among others, that content providers and teachers promote pupil analysis of genocides, including the ethnic, religious, and political causes. This bill would incorporate additional changes in Section 51226.3 of the Education Code, proposed by AB 1915, to be operative only if AB 1915 and this bill are chaptered and become effective on or before January 1, 2015, and this bill is chaptered last.