Jewish activists await draft on ethnic studies
High school students in Marin and statewide could become some of the first in the nation to learn how to counteract anti-Semitism and to offset bigotry and hate against Jews and other groups — if California’s new ethnic studies model curriculum is adopted as planned.
“If you’re doing ethnic studies to try to help combat a big concern, which is White supremacist extremists, how are you going to do a program to combat that without teaching about the philosophy which is at the core of White nationalism, which is anti-Semitism?” said Mike Harris, a San Rafael parent and advocate for Jewish education. “You can’t not include it.”
Harris is among thousands of California parents, educators and anti-bias advocates awaiting the draft of the model ethnic studies curriculum, expected by next week. After circulating for public comment, the draft will be presented for a vote by the State Board of Education when it meets March 17 and 18.
The plan would provide an academic structure of mandatory requirements for high school students to complete in order to graduate by 2029-30. School districts could still use their own ethnic studies program, but the model would set the standard of requirements if a new bill, Assembly Bill 101, now in legislative committee, is approved later this session.
AB 101 would require all schools to have some type of ethnic studies program by 2025-26. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed an earlier version of the bill last year because, he said, the model curriculum was not balanced. The changes over the past year are expected to fix that imbalance.
At issue in the curriculum is which ethnic groups are included, and how the groups — especially Jews — will be portrayed. An original draft in 2019 covered instruction for four core ethnic groups: African-Americans, Chicano Latino Americans, Asian Americans-Pacific Islanders and Native Americans.
It did not include Jewish Americans, Arab Americans, Sikhs and Armenians. Those four have since been added.
The new draft is expected to include two lesson plans on Jewish Americans — including one on those who came from the Middle East and North Africa. Also, references deemed anti-Semitic in previous class materials have been removed.
“I’m grateful that thousands of Californians pushed back against a proposed curriculum that was blatantly anti-Semitic,” Assemblyman Marc Levine, DGreenbrae, said in an email. “I have shared my concern with the California Department of Education to ensure that bigots of any kind have no place in curriculum development.”