The Fight to Mandate Ethnic Studies
In January 2019, Assembly Bill 331 was drafted with hopes of making ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement. If passed, California would be the first state to mandate a one semester ethnic studies course as a minimum requirement to get a high school diploma, starting with the graduating class of 2029. This summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill, relaying in his explanation that he supported ethnic studies as a whole, but cited unspecified problems in the proposed curriculum. Gov. Newsom's decision shocked many scholars and leaders, such as those within the California Teachers Association (CTA).
"In the midst of the largest and most widespread movement for equality and equity our nation has seen since the Civil Rights era, the need for all students to learn about the diverse histories and perspectives of Black, Indigenous and people of color couldn’t be greater,” said CTA President E. Toby Boyd. He called for “an authentic ethnic studies curriculum that can be implemented with veracity and reliability.”
On July 31, 2020, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced the California Department of Education’s (CDE) recommendations to revise the ethnic studies model curriculum. Since then, the Instruction Quality Commission (IQC) has been reviewing each draft at its quarterly meetings with these recommendations in mind.
The ethnic studies model curriculum’s foundation focused on Black/African-American, Chicano/a, Asian-American, and Indigenous studies, but this was not inclusive enough to get AB 331 passed in California schools. Ethnic and religious groups such as Sikh, Armenian, Jewish, and Korean Americans felt overlooked in the 2019 proposal. Some groups felt like the strides of their ancestors in the United States were not emphasized, and that anti-capitalist rhetoric was promoted. In August 2020, the California Legislative Jewish Caucus (CLJC) said the bill prioritized Latino, Black, and Asian caucuses, stating that "the initial draft of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, which was released in 2019, included highly-problematic content about Jews and Israelis." The CLJC has worked alongside Thurmond to create guardrails prohibiting anti-Jewish and anti-Israel teachings in ethnic studies.
Since the first revisions, the conversation around who and what should be included has ultimately tested the weight of the truth between leaders in the IQC revision meetings.
On November 19, 2020 the IQC debated if terms like patriarchy, ableism, and anthropocentrism should be included in the curriculum. The IQC discussed replacing the term "capitalism" to "economic inequality." Assembly members argued if the list of terms were exhaustive enough to sustain the fullness of BIPOC experiences. Assembly-member Shirley Weber advocated shortening the list of items under power and oppression, stating that it has been exhausted and that "there will always be economic inequality unless you advocate for socialism, which then brings in folks concerned about communism and if they have oppressive powers as well." Board-member Patricia Ann Rucker turned the conversation back to the mission of the ethnic studies curriculum, stating that that "it's about how to do the work, how to have the conversation about oppression, and creating a good outline for how to implement and introduce the conversation, so teachers don't make the mistake in teaching slavery as an economic model in the U.S."
The discussions and rebuttals within the IQC's latest meeting revealed the long-standing lack of major reform of U.S history classes' model curriculum. According to a 2015 report from The Atlantic, McGraw-Hill history books listed the Atlantic Slave Trade as a means of immigration for African workers, instead of being listed as slaves who were stolen. This was later revised after public outcry on social media, but would have likely been ignored otherwise.
Although the new ethnic studies model curriculum revisions are currently in development for March 2021, the core teachings on Black/African-American, Chicano/a, Asian-American, and Indigenous studies have been implemented in many California high schools independently from state mandates. For instance, the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES) is in its fifth year of mandating ethnic studies as a graduation requirement. Ben Burton, who graduated from LACES in 2019, took the course in the first year of its inception in 2016.
“At LACES it felt like ethnic studies was like sensitivity training, and people decided to make fun of/delegitimize it," Burton said. "There's so much specificity in the way these classes have to be taught, from curriculum to teacher. It's difficult to standardize, but totally important."
