Mr. Kevin McCarthy:

I would make two comments. First, the committee is entitled to invite a visitor from the United Kingdom, but there are different systems depending on whether one is in Scotland or England, and it will get a very different viewpoint on the way history should be structured. That is just a matter of information.

Second, by way of explanation, when I refer to statements of learning, I am not trying to be vague in any way. They are the things around which the specific history syllabus will be built. Nobody is telling the committee that history will be a core subject for every student. That cannot happen in the framework as it is constructed, but it is tremendously important that those statements of learning are factored into the development of the history specifications. I do not know the reason the syllabus is no longer being used either, but it is tremendously important that as many as possible of the significant statements of learning are factored into history because it is a wide-ranging, all-embracing and valuable subject, and that must be reinforced by the statements of learning. They may not necessarily be the ones in the framework because it was only a tentative suggestion that was made.