Did anyone else make the argument to your folks that school was easier for them because they didn’t have to learn as much history as you did?

Seems like there’s always more history than there used to be.

Well, the state is working to update some academic standards. More below.

Academic updates

Updates appear to be coming to social studies classes in Alabama, reports AL.com’s Trisha Powell Crain.

Geneva City Schools Superintendent Ron Snell is spearheading the effort. He told the Alabama Board of Education that the state wants more emphasis put on civics and Alabama history.

The current standards have been in place since 2010, so you might see why there’s some urgency to this: Since the history curriculum hasn’t been overhauled in 14 years, at some point you start getting behind by decades.

When a rewrite of the standards stalled in 2021, Fordham Institute researcher David Griffith pointed out that the current standards are spotty on anything after 1970.

There’s currently a focus on Alabama history in the fourth grade and civics in the seventh grade. Snell said they’d like to see more state history woven into other courses so that students can get more of it over several grades.

We could get a peek at a draft of the new standards by August.

Run-ins with the law

When Kansas City Chiefs defensive lineman Isaiah Buggs was arrested over the weekend on second-degree domestic violence and second-degree burglary charges, it not only added to his legal problems plus whatever jeopardy it may pose to his lucrative profession but also has caused his bond to be revoked in an animal-cruelty case, reports AL.com’s Carol Robinson.

A Tuscaloosa County judge has ordered the former Alabama player to be held without bond.

Authorities say that he was booked last month after neglected and malnourished dogs were found at a rental he had moved from. Buggs’s lawyer said they weren’t his.

Also this year Buggs has been arrested twice on misdemeanor charges at his business, the Kings Hookah Lounge — once for allegedly shoving the Tuscaloosa police chief. His lawyer said previously that the arrests are part of an effort to shut down Kings Hookah Lounge.

A champion for crime victims – including her daughter

The mother of 21-year-old Quenette Shehane, the victim in one of Alabama’s most notorious murders of the 1970s, has died, reports AL.com’s Howard Koplowitz.

After her daughter’s kidnapping and murder, Miriam Shehane became a prolific crime-victims advocate, founding the organization Victims of Crime and Leniency, or VOCAL, in 1982. That organization is still around today, having influenced legislation that has affected the state’s justice system on a number of issues.

Quenette Shehane was a recent Birmingham-Southern College grad in December 1976. She went to a Birmingham convenience store, where three men kidnapped her. They held her, raped her and shot her to death when she tried to get away. All three were convicted: One died in the electric chair in 1990, and the other two are still serving life sentences.

District Attorney for the 19th Judicial Circuit of Alabama CJ Robinson: “Miriam was a true hero who touched so many lives. Out of a tragedy she found the grace to institute change so that others would walk an easier path. Her legacy will live on in the impact she had on us all.”

Miriam Shehane was 91 years old.

A Say Hey stand-in

Willie Mays isn’t expected to make it to Thursday night’s MLB at Rickwood Field ballgame between the Giants and Cardinals in Birmingham, reports AL.com’s Mark Inabinett.

Mays is 93 years old. One of the perks of being 93 is that you get an automatic pass to back out of whatever you need or want to back out of. We wish the Say Hey Kid health and happiness.

But what will be at Rickwood during much of the game will be the Willie Mays Hall of Fame plaque — the actual one from the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. If you’re not into baseball history at all, that may be lost on you. But the plaques at Cooperstown are iconic. There’s one for every player in the Hall. Mays, who’s from Jefferson County, was inducted in 1979.

Quoting

“We’re not in business just to operate a business, but we’re here to be part of the state, and support the residents of this state.”

Chris Susock, who’s been CEO of Hyundai Motor Manufacturing of Alabama since Jan. 1.

More Alabama News

On This Date

• Born: In 1944, singer Sandy Posey, originally of Jasper. Her solo career was in that Skeeter Davis genre zone somewhere between pop and countrypolitan. She also did a lot of session work as a backup singer, with Elvis and many others. Reportedly, she’s backing Percy Sledge on “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
• Also on this date, in 1954, state attorney general candidate Albert Patterson, who was running on promises to clean up corruption in Phenix City, was shot and killed in Phenix City. That actually hastened the end of the Sin City days in the East Alabama town.

The podcast

We have an explainer on the bodies that are buried beneath the Birmingham Zoo.

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