Calif. adopts 1st statewide ethnic studies curriculum

SAN FRANCISCO — As America reels from its latest spate of deadly hate crimes and racism, the California State Board of Education on Thursday approved the nation’s first statewide ethnic studies curriculum for high schools, saying the teaching of discrimination and oppression has never been more important.

After an eight-hour public meeting Thursday, board members voted unanimously, 11-0, to approve the curriculum it hopes will become a model for other states to follow.

Educators and civil rights leaders who spoke at the meeting mourned this week’s killing of eight people, most of them Asian women, in Georgia, as the latest tragic example of racism but also a poignant reminder that education is an essential strategy to combating hate.

“We are reminded daily that racism is not only a legacy of the past but a clear and present danger,” said Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond, who led President Joe Biden’s education transition team. “We must understand this history if we are finally to end it.”

Crafting the curriculum took three years, drawing more than 100,000 public comments as different groups objected to being left out or misrepresented. Public comment that preceded the board’s vote drew about 150 callers, many of whom asked the board to reject the curriculum and echoed the heated debate that took place throughout its drafting. The loudest criticism came from Jewish and pro-Arab groups who accused each other of trying to silence each other’s histories.

Some callers who identified themselves as Jewish and the descendants of Holocaust survivors said the plan “erased the unique stories of Jews in the Middle East.” Others criticized the curriculum as anti-Arab, saying it white-washed content about Arab Americans and erased earlier content about Palestinians.

The nearly 900-page Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, which has been years in the making, is meant to teach high school students about the struggles and contributions of “historically marginalized peoples which are often untold in U.S. history courses.” It centers on the four groups that are the focus of college-level ethnic studies: African Americans, Chicano/ Latinos, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and Native Americans.

It also includes lesson plans on Jews, Arab Americans, Sikh Americans and Armenian Americans who are not traditionally part of an ethnic studies curriculum “but have important stories to tell about oppression and contributions” to California and the country, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said. Those groups were added after objecting to an earlier draft that left them out.