George Washington High School in San Francisco, California, March 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Race and ethnicity can be tricky topics to discuss, especially in the classroom. But the California Department of Education had no idea how heated the debate would get when it set out to draft a model ethnic studies curriculum for high schools throughout the US state.
The process took over two years, multiple versions, and drew nearly 100,000 public comments.
In one ongoing conflict, Jewish and pro-Arab groups have accused each other of discrimination and trying to silence each other’s histories.
Several authors of the original draft have demanded their names be stripped from the final version, saying it’s watered down and substandard. Their draft was criticized for taking a left-wing, biased and a politically charged view of history, including terms like “hxrstory” and “herstory.” It defined capitalism as a system of oppression and drew complain
The final draft was criticized by authors of the original version as watered down and substandard, with all of them demanding their names be stripped from the proposal.
In one ongoing conflict, Jewish and pro-Arab groups have accused each other of discrimination and trying to silence each other’s histories.
California’s ethnic studies debate highlights some of the difficult questions educators will face in an era when the US is redefining its heroes and asking whose stories should be told. More than three-quarters of California’s 6.2 million public school students are nonwhite.
“We’ve worked to bring justice to what we believe the ethnic studies movement to be about,” Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of public instruction, told reporters.
A model ethnic studies curriculum for California high schoolers has been in the works for over two years, in an era of tense racial reckoning in the United States. The final draft doesn’t meet everyone’s standards, but proponents say it is a good starting point.
California Ethnic Studies Curriculum Pushes Students to Volunteer at Arab-American Organizations
Proposed curriculum does not suggest volunteering at organizations for any other ethnic groups
March 16, 2021 12:50 PM
The latest version of a public school curriculum set to be implemented across California includes an assignment for students to volunteer for an Arab-American organization, a call that s not made for any other ethnic group.
The call is included in a sample homework assignment for California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC), an education blueprint years in the making that has been criticized in the past as blatantly anti-Semitic and caused an uproar in the American Jewish community.
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