I was doing a quick glance through of Georgia QCC standards and came up with the below one which will be interesting to atheists.
Quality Core Curriculum Standards
Character Education Citizenship (all grades)
Strand: Citizenchip
10 Topic: Citizenship
Standard: Respect for the creator: our most basic freedoms and rights are not granted to us from the government but they are intrinsically ours; i.e., the Constitution does not grant Americans the right of freedom of speech, it simply recognizes that each of us is born with that right. This is to say that the founders of the republic recognized a higher authority, a power greater than themselves that endowed every human being with certain unalienable rights that no government or legal document could ever revoke or take away. In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson names this life force that permeates the universe and from which our unalienable rights stem the “creator”, “nature’s God”, and the “supreme judge of the world”. If we are to respect life, the natural rights of all people and the authority which the founders based their legal opinions on concerning our separation from Great Britain then there must be a respect for that creator from which all our rights flow. This cannot be interpreted as a promotion of religion or even as a promotion of the belief in a personal God, but only as an acknowledgment that the intrinsic worth of every individual derives from no government, person or group of persons, but is something that each of us is born with and which no thing and no one can ever deprive us of.
There is, as of yet, no lesson plan associated with it on the QCC Standards and Resources website.
But there’s no lesson plan, in any grade, associated with the below one on Democracy either.
Quality Core Curriculum Standards
Character Education Citizenship (all grades)
Strand: Citizenchip
1 Topic: Citizenship
Standard: Democracy: government of, by and for the people, exercised through the voting process.
Perhaps these “Character” standards are being phased out? The website is unclear. It gives a link to go to for the newly proposed GA performance standards for language, arts, science, social studies and mathematics.
The Columbia County website however has “The State Board of Education mandates a comprehensive character education program for levels K-12. Twenty-seven character traits are addressed.” It gives a PDF of Character Words of the Month. Under November we have “Citizenship: Tolerance, Patriotism, Loyalty, Respect for the Creator.”
One can hope that the “creator” standard is one that’s being phased out.
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