Teaching Texas' 5.5 Million Children—While Avoiding Who They Are, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Teaching Texas' 5.5 Million Children—While Avoiding Who They Are

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 31, 2025

What is arguably already taking shape in Texas is an “avoidance curriculum”—one that seeks to evade the difficult truths of history by structuring out critical discourse, critical thought and, as a consequence, pedagogy itself. This reality begs a deeper question: Why do far-right conservatives exhibit such deep-seated shame about their own history? And why must everyone else—most especially our public school children and youth—bear the consequences of this willful ignorance through a curriculum that avoids, rather than confronts, the complexities and painful truths of history?

Reporting by Isaac Yu in the Austin American-Statesman on December 30 underscores a familiar and troubling pattern in Texas education policy: once again, communities of color and women risk being sidelined in the stories our children are taught to value. As the state undertakes a sweeping rewrite of its social studies standards—standards that will shape lesson plans, textbooks, and assessments for 5.5 million students—the process has become mired in political conflict over slavery, civil rights, Indigenous histories, and whose experiences are deemed central.

The rewrite is being steered primarily by the Texas State Board of Education, with support from the Texas Education Agency under Commissioner Mike Morath. Yet the advisory structure raises red flags: among nine content advisors, only one appears to have experience in Texas public schools, while several are conservative activists. Hence, not at all diverse. This imbalance matters because it produces predictable gaps, silences, and biases in what is included—and excluded—from the curriculum. Curriculum decisions are never neutral; they reflect values, power, and determinations about whose knowledge is considered legitimate.

Early signals from the new “comprehensive” framework suggest a narrowing of perspective—boosting Texas history while eliminating standalone world cultures courses and delaying sustained engagement with nonwhite histories until later grades. As Yu's story recounts, SBOE member Staci Childs poignantly asks, when do students who “look like me” get to see themselves in the curriculum?

Sadly, this shouldn't even be a question in the first place. That said, representation of women and people of color in the curriculum is the central question, especially considering Texas' rapidly changing demographics, as reported by the Texas Education Agency (2024).

Source: 2024 Annual Report - Student Demographics, Texas Education

Agency.

Of the roughly 5.5 million children enrolled in Texas public schools, the majority are students of color. According to the most recent enrollment data from the Texas Education Agency, Latina/o/x students make up just over half of the total population—about 53 percent, or approximately 2.9 million children. This makes Latina/o/x students not only the largest racial or ethnic group in Texas schools, but the "demographic center" of the system, if you will.

White students account for about 24 percent of public school enrollment, totaling roughly 1.3 million students. Black students represent about 13 percent, or approximately 720,000 children statewide. Asian students make up about 5 percent of enrollment, numbering roughly 275,000 students. Native American (American Indian/Alaska Native) students comprise less than 1 percent of the total—close to 55,000 children across the state.

In other words, nearly three out of every four students in Texas public schools are students of color. This demographic reality stands in sharp contrast to ongoing curriculum debates that risk narrowing historical representation, raising fundamental questions about whose histories, identities, and contributions are centered—and whose are deferred or diminished—in the education of Texas’ children.

Texas has time—final standards are slated for classrooms in 2030—but time alone will not ensure equity. Representation is not an add-on. It is foundational to civic understanding and belonging. If this rewrite proceeds without meaningful inclusion of scholars, teachers, and communities who reflect Texas’ full diversity, we risk entrenching an avoidance curriculum that tells far too many students that their histories—and by extension, their lives—do not actually matter in the story of our nation’s grand American narrative.

Texas is overhauling what students will learn in social studies and history. Here's what to know

By Isaac Yu,Staff WriterDec 30, 2025

People demonstrate Monday, Aug. 1, 2022, at the William B. Travis Building in Austin over the need for expansive and diverse social studies curriculum.William Luther, Staff Photographer / Staff photographer

A rewrite of Texas’ social studies curriculum is underway, with lawmakers, teachers and history enthusiasts at odds over exactly how to present the history of Texas and the United States to the state’s 5.5 million public school students. 

State education officials regularly review and revamp standards for all subjects. But the social studies rewrite in particular has become a thorny political process, with lawmakers clashing over the portrayal of slavery, civil rights, Indigenous people, the Alamo and other subjects. 

READ MORE: Texas SBOE backs far-right plan to deemphasize world history, cultures

The process will ultimately result in new state standards, known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, which form the basis of classroom teachers’ lesson plans, future textbook editions and the new iteration of the standardized STAAR test. 

Here’s what you need to know:

Who is writing the new curriculum?

The task of rewriting the curriculum is largely delegated to the 15-member State Board of Education, whose members are elected by voters. Currently, the board is made up of 10 Republicans and 5 Democrats. The Texas Education Agency, led by Commissioner Mike Morath, also provides assistance.

Teachers, educators, and members of the public from across Texas are also asked to provide input through several working groups convened by TEA, though those have yet to be formed.

READ MORE: Inside the 'power struggle' that led to former Alamo CEO Kate Rogers' ouster

State board members have also appointed nine content advisors to help guide the curriculum. They include several conservative Christian activists as well as the recently-ousted CEO of the Alamo Trust. Only one of the nine advisors appears to have experience working in a Texas public school.

Once the work groups form a draft curriculum, which is expected in January, the state board of education has a chance to amend and debate it before providing final sign-off in June. 

Why is Texas' social studies curriculum being overhauled now?

All state standards are reviewed by the State Board approximately every 15 to 20 years. The reviews can result in small or significant revisions.

The social studies standards were last scheduled to be reviewed in 2022. Working groups met over the course of nearly a year to draft the new state standards.

READ MORE: State board scraps new Texas social studies guidelines as critics decry ‘wokeness,’ LGBT themes

But once the drafts reached the state board, members began clashing over certain hot-button topics, with the most conservative members claiming the curriculum had been infused with “wokeness” and LGBT themes. 

Those tensions derailed the negotiations, and the board ultimately scrapped the drafts and voted to start fresh three years later. 

What changes are being made?

The state board has not yet released draft curriculum. But earlier this year, members agreed to a new framework that will determine which broad topics are introduced for grades 3-8. 

The new framework, known as the “comprehensive” model, introduces a novel chronological approach to history and signals that the process will result in drastically different new standards. The model, favored by conservatives on the board, boosts the proportion of Texas history, and removes standalone world cultures courses. Third grade will now begin with “birth of Western civilizations” and eighth grade will become a Texas history-only capstone course. 

Democrats on the board say the new framework reduces representation, will be more difficult for teachers to explain and delays lessons about nonwhite people to later grades.

“Looking at this storytelling thing, when do people that look like me, get to learn about themselves before the fifth grade?” said Staci Childs, D-Houston, pointing to herself and other Black or Hispanic members of the board. 

The standards are also being revised to align with recently-passed state law that requires students to be taught about the perils of communism.

The law says students must learn about "atrocities attributable to communist regimes," including the Cambodian genocide, guerilla movements in Latin America and the "oppression and suffering experienced by people living under communist regimes." The lessons must also touch on modern threats posed to the U.S. and its allies by communist regimes and ideologies. 

When will the new curriculum take effect?

The full standards will enter classrooms in the fall of 2030, according to the board’s most recently-approved timeline. They will apply to both traditional public and open-enrollment charter schools. 

The communism provisions, however, were written by lawmakers outside of the typical review cycle and will be incorporated during the 2026-2027 school year. 

Dec 30, 2025

Isaac Yu

ReporterOriginally from Garland, Texas, Isaac Yu is a politics reporter based in Austin. He previously wrote for the Texas Tribune, Wall Street Journal and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He can be reached at isaac.yu@hearst.com.

Texas Higher Education at a Crossroads: Incentives Without Evidence Will Not Deliver Equity, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Texas Higher Education at a Crossroads: Incentives Without Evidence Will Not Deliver Equity

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 30, 2025

Recent reporting from the Texas Tribune makes one thing unmistakably clear. In his December 18, 2025 analysis, journalist Rob Reid draws on newly released longitudinal data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to show that while more Texas students are completing degrees and credentials than in years past, deep inequities persist. 

Overall attainment has inched upward, yet economically disadvantaged students—along with Black, Hispanic, rural, and first-generation students—remain far less likely to complete the journey through higher education. This uneven progress is not a puzzle to be solved nor is it accidental. Rather, it is the cumulative result of policy choices layered onto deeply unequal social and educational conditions.

Texas has taken steps to rethink how it funds readiness and completion, yet whether these steps meaningfully advance equity remains an open question. That said, the model is one that ties bonuses to college, career, and military readiness in K–12 together with a restructured finance system for community colleges, reflecting a shift away from seat-time accounting toward progress, momentum, and completion. In theory, these policies reward what matters. In practice, however, they raise questions the data cannot yet answer—and that policymakers may be eager to ignore.

First, incentives can redistribute attention without redistributing capacity. Schools and colleges serving high-poverty communities confront barriers—housing insecurity, work obligations, childcare needs, transportation breakdowns—that no performance formula can neutralize. Without sustained investments in advising, academic support, and students’ basic needs, outcomes-based funding risks rewarding institutions already positioned to succeed while leaving others further behind.

Second, measurement itself shapes behavior. What gets counted gets prioritized. When incentives emphasize short-term or easily documented outcomes, institutions may narrow pathways rather than expand opportunity—particularly for students whose educational trajectories are nonlinear and require time, flexibility, and sustained institutional support.

Third, these reforms are unfolding alongside an aggressive push to privatize education through vouchers. Diverting public dollars to private providers drains resources from the very public schools expected to produce better outcomes. You cannot systematically weaken public education and then fault it for uneven results. Well, I guess you can, but you shouldn't.

History matters here. Texas once understood that access drives attainment. The Texas Dream Act—adopted in 2001—expanded in-state tuition to undocumented students who had grown up in Texas schools. Research showed clear enrollment gains, particularly among Latino students, and Texas emerged as a national leader in pragmatic, workforce-aligned access policy. 

The repeal of that law did not improve outcomes; it constricted them. It removed a proven pathway to higher education for students Texas had already invested in—and whose talents the state still needs.

Reinstating the Texas Dream Act is not a symbolic gesture. It would be a data-aligned policy response to persistent attainment gaps and looming workforce shortages. Any serious conversation about outcomes must include restoring access to students intentionally pushed out by regressive policy reversals.

Texas has the data. Texas has the policy tools. What remains uncertain is whether state leaders—and voters—are willing to insist that equity, not privatization, guide the next phase of reform. Incentives alone will not save us. Public investment, inclusive access, and political courage might.

Policy and reporting can shape behavior, but incentives are not the same as evidence—especially when privatization undermines public capacity.

Finally, Texas must recommit to peer-reviewed, independent research to evaluate these largely untested policy shifts. Outcomes-based funding models, voucher expansion, and access rollbacks are being implemented at scale without the benefit of long-term causal evidence—particularly regarding their effects on low-income students and communities of color. 

Policy experimentation without rigorous evaluation is not innovation; it is risk. 

If Texas is serious about student success, it must fund and follow research that shows what works across differences in race, income, geography, legal status, and gender.

More Texas students complete journey through college, but low-income students still left behind
Economically disadvantaged students are much less likely to go on and attain degrees, according to new state data that tracks long-term outcomes.

By Rob Reid, GRAPHICS BY Alex Ford and Carla Astudillo

Dec. 18, 2025, 12:00 p.m. Central

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Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give us feedback.

Texas has long failed to get most of its students the higher education credentials the workforce increasingly demands. But recent laws that reward schools for helping students succeed later in life could help the state make up lost ground, experts say.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board regularly tracks if students enrolled in eighth grade eventually receive a degree or certificate at a two- or four- year institution within the state.

The proportion of students who have received a degree has climbed over the last 15 years, according to data the board released in December 2025.

Still, the state appears to be far short of meeting workforce demand. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. jobs will require education or training after high school by 2031, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. In Texas, 25% of students obtained such education or training within the state. (The coordinating board didn’t track students who went out of state for college every year.)

Texas has long failed to get most of its students the higher education credentials the workforce increasingly demands. But recent laws that reward schools for helping students succeed later in life could help the state make up lost ground, experts say.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board regularly tracks if students enrolled in eighth grade eventually receive a degree or certificate at a two- or four- year institution within the state.

The proportion of students who have received a degree has climbed over the last 15 years, according to data the board released in December 2025.

Still, the state appears to be far short of meeting workforce demand. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. jobs will require education or training after high school by 2031, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. In Texas, 25% of students obtained such education or training within the state. (The coordinating board didn’t track students who went out of state for college every year.)


“Texas is a tale of two states,” says Jesse Hendrix, executive director of College Possible, a national nonprofit focused on supporting low-income students through college. “On one hand, Texas is the eighth largest economy in the world; on the other, Houston now holds the highest poverty rate of any major U.S. city.”

Nearly 80% of students in the Houston Independent School District are socioeconomically disadvantaged, compared to about 60% statewide. And only 15% of students from the district received a degree or certificate, compared to 25% statewide.

But Hendrix also notes that rural regions face their own challenges, including limited broadband access, sparse postsecondary options, and long commutes to reach college campuses.

Male students also lag behind female students, and Black and Hispanic students face lower completion rates than their peers.

Sharp dropout rates have long persisted as students journey through high school and college. More than a decade ago, former Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes called it “leakage in the pipeline”.

Economically disadvantaged students, males, and Black and Hispanic students are more likely to experience it.

Note: Outcomes are based on a cohort of students enrolled in Texas public schools in the 2013-14 school year. The study tracks if students receive a degree or certificate at a two- or four-year institution in Texas within 11 years of enrolling in 8th grade. Numbers may not add up to 100 because of rounding.
Source: Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
Credit: Alex Ford

Despite these shortcomings and disparities, Texas ranks near the middle nationally in degree attainment.

Texas historically pioneered innovative policies, but its competitive edge was lost as the state was rolling back some initiatives, which other states also adopted, experts said. More recent policies — including bonus funding for schools with college and workforce success — may help Texas regain its edge. But the impacts aren’t yet fully known.

“This combination of wide-ranging disparities, fast-changing policies, and bold outcomes-based reforms makes Texas both one of the most challenging and most opportunity-rich environments in the country,” Hendrix said.
Economic challenges

Higher ed credentials are “one of the most reliable pathways to economic stability and long-term mobility,” according to Will Davies, the director of policy and research at Breakthrough Central Texas, a nonprofit focused on supporting first-generation students.

Davies notes that “even short-term credentials and associate degrees are associated with meaningfully higher earnings compared to a high school diploma alone,” citing a wage analysis by Commit Partnership.

But students from working-class and low-income families have to weigh more heavily the cost of college and household responsibilities with a shot at greater economic security, Davies said. He stressed that taking breaks away from post-high school education or training — often called “stopping out” — can backfire.

“Students who delay or stop out often accumulate debt without earning a credential, limiting both their earning power and their confidence in returning to school later,” he said.

Staying on track can be particularly difficult for economically disadvantaged students, according to Ann Vlach, who oversees Education to Employment Partners, a nonprofit that helps agencies in the Corpus Christi region support students as they progress through college. Things like work commitments, car repairs, and the need to line up child care can derail student progress, she said.

“It’s much harder to get back into that system once you’ve stepped away from it,” she said.

Look up student outcomes for your school district

Find your school district

Note: Outcomes are based on a cohort of students enrolled in Texas public schools in the 2012-13 school year. The study tracks if students receive a degree or certificate at a two- or four-year institution in Texas within 11 years of enrolling in 8th grade. The district-level data is one year older than the statewide data released this week by the state. District types are based on Texas Education Agency categories.

Source: Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
Credit: Carla Astudillo, Rob Reid.

Shifting policy, middle-of-the-pack results

Compared to other states, Texas has hovered around the “middle of the pack,” depending on the year and metric, said Carlo Castillo, a data analyst with Texas 2036, a nonprofit working on pressing statewide issues such as workforce development. He further noted that while Texas higher ed attainment accelerated in the past ten years, it’s still close to the national average.

In 1997, Texas created the Top 10% Plan, a first-of-its-kind program guaranteeing admission to high school students in the top 10% of their class. Then in 2001, Texas was the first state to provide in-state resident tuition for undocumented youth with the Texas Dream Act.

“Those types of policies tend to be impactful for student outcomes,” said Brian Holzman, an assistant professor at Texas A&M, who researches demographic gaps in higher ed attainment.

Holzman pointed to research from 2010 by Stella Flores, then an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, who uncovered a sharp enrollment boost among foreign-born Latinos in Texas and other states that allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition.

But Texas rolled back these policies, undermining their aim to address disparities. Undocumented students in Texas no longer qualify for in-state resident tuition or state-distributed aid.

The Top 10% plan can slightly increase the number of students of colors automatically admitted into Texas colleges. But, Holzman said, it does not increase the number of students of color as much as race-conscious admission policies had. Amidst these changes, Hendrix said that College Possible has recently experienced a steep increase in requests for help from students and school districts in Texas trying to navigate the challenges of applying for and obtaining financial aid.

“Students are facing the consequences of newly regressive policies, such as a repeal of the Texas Dream Act, which directly fuels the affordability crises for many currently enrolled college students and those that are considering their next move after high school,” he said.
Promising Texas policies

Across Central Texas, the E3 Alliance partners with higher ed, employers, nonprofits, and policymakers to develop the student pipeline.

“The playbook is already in place for Texas and the eighth largest economy in the world, to really put together this massive workforce,” said Kyle Seipp, Senior Director at E3, which focuses on higher education and workforce development.

He points to some policies already in place that should help more students attain the degrees or certificates they need:The College, Career, or Military Readiness Outcomes Bonus, which was established in 2019, provides bonus funding to school districts with the highest rates of students who finished high school ready for college or the workforce. To address demographic disparities, this bonus is provided in separate categories for economically disadvantaged students, non-economically disadvantaged students and special education students.
A 2023 law restructured community college funding to incentivize schools that demonstrate students are making progress toward obtaining a workforce credential and completing college, rather than just boosting enrollment.

Because the state tracks the outcomes of students over the course of many years, the impacts of these laws won’t be apparent until the coordinating board has time to track whether recent eighth-graders end up attending or completing college or training programs.

Grace Atkins, a policy advisor at Texas 2036 focused on workforce and postsecondary education, is encouraged by these laws and thinks Texas is ahead of the pack with funding models based on student outcomes.

“Outcomes-based funding is something that is talked about a lot nationally, but Texas, more so than any other state, really, really emphasized that,” she said.

Vlach, with Education to Employment Partners, said the student outcomes bonus should help districts cover the costs of academic advising, which will aid students in filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, and preparing them for college admissions tests.

To help keep districts on track to earn a bonus, Vlach carefully tracks the outcomes data as it’s being updated and presents it to principals and superintendents every month.

“If we’re starting to see that we’re struggling with getting FAFSA done, if we’re doing that data once a month, it gives us a very active chance to pivot on that and do a FAFSA workshop,” she said. “Pull in more parents, do whatever we need to do to make that happen.”

“Same thing with testing,” she added. “If we’re not seeing testing happen, we can actually go in and say, like, hey, it’s time to do a testing workshop.”

About this analysis

Data for this analysis was obtained from the Texas Higher Ed Coordinating Board. We tracked outcome results for eighth grade students between the 1997-98 and 2013-14 school years and combined them into one longitudinal dataset.

The agency’s 8th Grade Cohort Longitudinal Study, now known as the Texas Talent Trajectory, tracks groups of Texas public school eighth graders over 11 years. This data is broken down by race/ethnicity, gender and economic status.

Texas Culture Wars in Historical Context: What 'Minority Civil Rights and the Texas Legislature' Reveals, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Texas Culture Wars in Historical Context: What 'Minority Civil Rights and the Texas Legislature' Reveals

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 30, 2025

Download here [pdf]

Reading Minority Civil Rights and the Texas Legislature (2018), a 22-page historical pamphlet I picked up in a legislative office last session is like holding a mirror to the present. 

The document offers an unflinching account of how Texas—since its founding—has been shaped by racial hierarchy, exclusion, and the enduring efforts of Black, Mexican American, and other minoritized communities to claim the full rights of citizenship. I appreciate the honesty. However, what becomes abundantly clear is this: the culture wars roiling Texas today are not new. They are the latest iteration of a long struggle over whose history, humanity, and political power this state will recognize.

Texas was built as a slaveholding society, its early laws explicitly designed to secure racial domination. Black Texans were denied citizenship, movement, literacy, and basic protections. Tejanos (Spanish for 'Texan')—despite their leadership in the revolution and early Republic—were pushed to the margins once Anglos consolidated power. 

After the Civil War, Reconstruction gains were met with Black Codes, Jim Crow statutes, and violent backlash. Mexican Americans faced parallel systems of segregation (“Juan Crow”), discriminatory policing, and routine exclusion from juries, schools, and the vote.

Yet the record also reminds us that resistance has always been part of the story—from Reconstruction legislators like Matthew Gaines and George Ruby, to Tejano lawmakers like Navarro and Seguin, to civil rights leaders such as Barbara Jordan, Héctor García, and the activists of LULAC, the NAACP, and the G.I. Forum. Each generation confronted efforts to roll back rights and narrow the definition of who counted as a “real” Texan.

Today’s culture wars follow this same pattern. Current battles—over teaching race and gender, restricting Ethnic Studies, banning books, suppressing voting rights, policing immigrants, and centralizing state authority over local communities—mirror earlier attempts to solidify racial power under the guise of “neutrality,” “order,” or “protecting children.” 

Just as past lawmakers used Black Codes, literacy tests, poll taxes, and segregation statutes to preserve social hierarchy, today’s leaders deploy curriculum bans, border militarization, and mid-decade redistricting efforts to limit democratic participation and narrow the public imagination.

What the historical record makes clear is that Texas has repeatedly oscillated between moments of democratic expansion and reactionary retrenchment. The culture war is simply the latest backlash against multiracial democracy—another attempt to redefine belonging by silencing the histories and communities whose presence destabilizes myths of Anglo exceptionalism.

But history also teaches us that backlash never has the final word. The same state that produced Jim Crow also produced Barbara Jordan. The same state that once denied Tejanos entry into the legislature now sees Latino lawmakers shaping statewide policy. Every wave of repression has been met by movements that expand freedom and insist on truth.

We are living through another such moment. What is being targeted is not only DEI, Ethnic Studies, or “divisive concepts,” but the capacity of Texans to understand their own history and to build a multiracial, pluralistic democracy. The historical record reveals a simple truth: when Texas suppresses knowledge, it is preparing to suppress rights. When it restricts whose stories may be told, it is deciding whose lives matter.

Understanding the deeper historical roots of Texas’ culture war does not diminish its urgency—but it does give us clarity: we have inherited a long, unfinished struggle to make Texas the democratic society it claims to be. And as past generations showed, progress comes not from silence or retreat, but from organized, principled resistance.

History is not repeating itself—it is calling upon all people of good conscience to finish the work.

Reference

Senate Publications and Printing. (2018). Minority Civil Rights and the Texas Legislature. https://www.lrl.texas.gov/scanned/SIRSI/MinorityCivilRightsandtheTexasLegislature.pdf

Five Years Later: Ethnic Studies as Renewal in an Age of Structured Forgetting, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Five Years Later: Ethnic Studies as Renewal in an Age of Structured Forgetting*

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 29, 2025

Five years ago, I stood at Teachers College, Columbia University, as the Edmond W. Gordon Lecturer, invited to speak on “Liberating Ways of Knowing: The Struggle for Ethnic Studies and the Educators We Need.” Time has passed,but the message has not aged. If anything, it has sharpened—because what was already a struggle over curriculum has become, unmistakably, a struggle over free speech, academic freedom, and democracy itself.

I began that day with land, because land is truth we too often treat as optional. We are never not on Native land. To acknowledge that is not to check a box; it is to practice another relationship to knowledge—one that insists history lives beneath us, not behind us. I've always said that "if there isn't dirt under your fingernails, you're not grassroots enough."

From there, I shared floricanto—meaning flower and song—because education, at its best, is not merely transmission. It is renewal. It is the restoration of spirit, connection, and belonging. We named the feelings the song “Agua de Estrellas” evoked—peace, tenderness, longing, hope—and I remember thinking: these are not “extras.” These are educational indicators and outcomes of a just and worthy education.

What I offered then was not simply an argument for Ethnic Studies as a course. It was an invitation to recognize Ethnic Studies as a different orientation—a framework that refuses the isolated, objectifying logic at the heart of so much assimilationist schooling. 

The Cartesian “I” that stands alone, producing knowledge as if the world were merely an object to be measured, ranked, and managed, is precisely the mindset that makes it possible to treat communities as problems, children as data points, and histories as inconveniences. Ethnic Studies pushes back—not only by adding content, but by challenging the deeper rules: whose knowledge counts, whose humanity is centered, and what education is ultimately for. 

Ethnic Studies pushes back against the Cartesian ego by insisting that learning is not an individual accomplishment detached from context, but a collective practice shaped by memory, power, and care. It recenters the body, spirit, and lived experience as legitimate sources of insight. It affirms that students do not arrive in classrooms as empty vessels, but as carriers of language, culture, ancestral knowledge, and moral imagination. And it asks educators to see themselves not as neutral technicians, but as ethical actors whose work either reproduces or resists injustice.

In this sense, Ethnic Studies is not simply about representation. It is about reorientation. It refuses the idea that schooling should prepare students only to compete, comply, or perform for systems that were never designed with them in mind. Instead, it calls for an education that prepares young people to belong, to think critically, to care deeply, and to act responsibly in a pluralistic democracy.

This is why Ethnic Studies cannot be reduced to a unit, a month, or a box to be checked. Its power lies in its ability to unsettle the assumptions that structure schooling itself—to interrupt the logics of ranking, sorting, and disposability that have long governed public education. And it is precisely this unsettling force that makes Ethnic Studies both transformative and threatening in our current moment.

At a time when Ethnic Studies and DEI initiatives are under sustained political attack—framed as divisive, ideological, or dangerous—the deeper truth is this: what is being resisted is not “identity,” but relational ways of doing, knowing, and being in the world. What is being feared is not history, but the possibility that students might learn to see themselves as fully human, fully entitled to voice, and fully capable of naming the structures that shape their lives.

This is why I shared the work of Academia Cuauhtli (meaning "Eagle Academy" in Nahuatl)—our Saturday academy grounded in bilingual learning, co-constructed curriculum, and community partnership. 

One lesson from that work has stayed with me because it continues to prove true: if you anchor an initiative only in the university, you risk losing it to faculty mobility and institutional drift; if you anchor it only in the district, you risk losing it to organizational restructuring and political turnover. Anchored in the community—the holders of memory, consequence, and continuity—the work sustains.

When I look back now, what feels most enduring from that lecture is not any single policy detail, but a posture: the insistence that education must be a site of relationship rather than extraction; of truth rather than avoidance; of renewal rather than punishment. Five years ago, the urgency was clear. Today, the consequences of ignoring it are unavoidable.

Ethnic Studies pushes back against the Cartesian ego—and against the isolation, erasure, and moral indifference it produces—by offering something far more demanding and far more hopeful: an education rooted in connection and the shared work of becoming fully human together.

Like I always say, "Some day, Ethnic Studies will simply be called 'a good education.'"

Reference

*I draw from Trouillot (1995) who first expressed this concept of "structured forgetting."

Trouillot, M.-R. (1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Beacon Press.

"The Vision of the Vanquished": Knowledge Europe Destroyed—and that the U.S. Power Structure Still Fears, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

"The Vision of the Vanquished": Knowledge Europe Destroyed—and that the U.S. Power Structure Still Fears

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 24, 2025

You may view and listen to this blog here also posted below.

There is a great deal to ponder when we sit with the historical record not from the conqueror’s pen, but from the voices of those who survived conquest.

One learns of some of these communities through Miguel León-Portilla’s landmark work, The Broken Spears (Visión de los vencidos). Drawn from original Nahuatl sources written in the 1500s and published in 1959, the book offers the closest account we have of the invasion of Tenochtitlan—today’s Mexico City—from the perspective of the invaded. 

León-Portilla’s contribution was not to interpret these voices into comfort, but to preserve them as testimony, gathered and preserved across numerous archives by the children of survivors, allowing the vanquished to speak in their own words (León-Portilla, 1959/2006).

This fullest surviving account reveals not only the great cultural and linguistic diversity within and around Tenochtitlan, but also its extraordinary sophistication. At the time of the Spanish invasion, Tenochtitlan was a meticulously planned metropolis with engineered causeways, freshwater aqueducts, regulated markets, and sanitation systems that surpassed those of most European cities. 

It practiced chinampa agriculture—one of the most productive and sustainable farming systems ever developed—and maintained universal education through formal schools for both elites and commoners (León-Portilla, 1959/2006; Mann, 2005). While much of Europe struggled with overcrowding, open sewers, and periodic famine, Tenochtitlan functioned as a clean, ordered, ecologically attuned urban center.

See 3-D digital reconstruction of Tenochtitlan by Thomas Kole (2017)

Perhaps the most revealing evidence of Tenochtitlan’s advancement comes from Spanish eyewitnesses themselves. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a conquistador who participated in the invasion, wrote in astonishment:

“We were amazed… at the great cities and towns built on the water… it all seemed like an enchantment from a book of chivalry” (Díaz del Castillo, 1632/2012, Book II, chap. 88)

Díaz del Castillo compared Tenochtitlan to Venice, widely regarded as Europe’s most advanced city at the time—a comparison that carries extraordinary weight precisely because it comes from a hostile witness (Díaz del Castillo, 1967). This was not a primitive settlement encountered by Europeans bringing “civilization.” It was a civilization Europe encountered and chose to destroy.

The devastation was led by Hernán Cortés, whose actions would today be unambiguously described as war crimes. The violence was so severe that even Spain eventually distanced itself from him. Yet colonial narratives have long recast this annihilation of an advanced society as discovery or progress.

One of the most haunting statements preserved in The Broken Spears comes from an Indigenous eyewitness, paraphrased but searing in its clarity: they came, they conquered, and they never once asked what our cosmovision was (León-Portilla, 1959/2006). This sentence names colonial violence at its deepest level—not only the theft of land and life, but the refusal to recognize another way of knowing the world.

León-Portilla does not attempt to resolve this wound. Aside from his methodological introduction, the book remains an anthology of voices. That restraint matters. It resists the colonial impulse to narrate devastation into closure or to translate loss into lessons that absolve the conqueror.

The destruction of Tenochtitlan was not the result of cultural inferiority, but of a refusal to recognize another civilization as worthy of study, much less of existing. That refusal did not end in the sixteenth century. Today, it reappears in more bureaucratic and sanitized form—in the backlash against Ethnic Studies, in the dismantling of DEI initiatives, and in policies that treat minoritized knowledge as dangerous, divisive, or expendable.

Once again, majorities move through institutions without asking the descendants of this same history what they know—or what might be redemptive about their ways of knowing, doing, and being in the world. Ethnic Studies does precisely what conquest refused to do: it asks whose cosmovisions were silenced, what knowledge survived anyway, and how those knowledge systems might offer more humane, truthful, and sustainable ways forward. That is precisely why it is being targeted.

The attack on Ethnic Studies and DEI is not about rigor, neutrality, or free inquiry. It is about control—about preserving institutions that still cannot bear to ask what minoritized communities know, remember, value, or imagine beyond the colonial frame. Visión de los vencidos reminds us that dismantling does not always arrive with swords or cannons; sometimes it comes as legislation, budget cuts, appeals to “neutrality,” and so-called program “consolidations” that quietly strip resources, power, and voice—once again refusing to listen.

Until we recognize these attacks for what they are—today’s version of institutional dismantling or "conquest"—we will continue to mistake erasure for "balance" and domination for "progress."

None of this has to be feared. Asking what was never asked—listening to the descendants of conquest and recognizing the redemptive possibilities of their ways of knowing, doing, and being—does not weaken institutions; it humanizes them. What threatens democratic life is not Ethnic Studies or DEI, but the continued refusal to listen and know.

References

Díaz del Castillo, B. (1967). The true history of the conquest of New Spain (Vol. 3). Lulu. com.

Kole, T. (2017). Tenochtitlan: 3-D digital reconstruction of the Aztec capital [Digital reconstruction]. Independent project. https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/

León-Portilla, M. (1959/2006). The broken spears: The Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico. Beacon Press.

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