Also
last June, the Seattle school board said it would weave ethnic studies
into its schools' curriculums after coming underNAACP pressure.
While
previous campaigns to establish ethnic studies programs around the U.S.
targeted minority groups, the Seattle NAACP made a different case,
asserting on its website, "Ethnic studies courses benefit white
students, who disproportionately have the privilege to be unaware of the
realities of racism." The argument was similar in the mostly black and
Latino city of Bridgeport, Conn., where last October school
administrators decided to require students to take a half-year class on
African American studies, Caribbean/Latin American studies or a course
on race to graduate.
"Even
in places where it hasn't fully blossomed, there are steps being taken
to incorporate ethnic studies," Jordan-Zachery said. That includes
Kansas and Texas, where legislators are pushing measures that would
institute Mexican American studies classes and those on other ethnic
groups.
"For
much of the history of education in the U.S., we have been deleted and
erased in textbooks," said Georgina C. Perez, a Latina Democrat on the
Texas state Board of Education. Through ethnic studies, she said, "we're
reclaiming our history."
States
and cities are following California, where education officials are
standardizing what's taught in ethnic studies classes after highly
touted programs in San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles.
Ethnic
studies grew out of the civil rights and anti-colonial movements of the
1960s. San Francisco State University was a pioneer, with its College
of Ethnic Studies that launched in 1968. UC Berkeley opened an ethnic
studies department a year later. In 1994, Berkeley High School became
one of the first public high schools in the nation to offer ethnic
studies.
A
key for many programs is their reading lists. At Barack and Michelle
Obama Elementary School in St. Paul, Minn., kids in an African American
studies class read "Desmond and the Very Mean Word," a story based of
the childhood of future Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu in apartheid
South Africa.
At
John O'Connell High School in San Francisco, ninth-grade ethnic studies
students look at how news and entertainment media portray minorities,
and they read from the autobiography of black nationalist Assata Shakur
and the Eddie Huang memoir on his experience as an Asian American,"Fresh
off the Boat."
In
Sarah Rodriguez's ethnic studies class at Santa Monica High School, a
recent lesson revolved around students discussing activism against
gentrification in Boyle Heights, where art galleries and coffee shops
have attracted white and more well-off newcomers in the traditionally
Mexican American, working-class neighborhood.
Activists
celebrated last year after an arts nonprofit called PSSST shut down
amid criticism that it was helping to displace locals.
Rodriguez
told the 17 students — a mix of sophomores, juniors and seniors — to
discuss a Boyle Heights blog that suggested gentrification counted as a
form of racist state violence.
She
asked students if they agreed that the transformation of a
neighborhood, often fueled by government policies that cater to business
interests, could be described that way. Some said yes. Some said the
answer wasn't so simple, especially after they watched a documentary
about a Latina artist who praised the arrival of galleries and said the
neighborhood was now safer than when she grew up there.
"The
class really challenges you to think about your identity yourself,"
said Diana Hernandez, a Mexican American sophomore enrolled. "It helps
us make more sense of what we're learning throughout the school day."
Nationally, supporters of ethnic studies say they lead to better grades and graduation rates. They frequently cite a
2016 Stanford University
study assessing the San Francisco Unified School District's ethnic
studies program when it was a pilot between 2010 and 2014. The study
found that students who took ethnic studies courses, including many who
came from lower-income families, performed better overall than other
students.
Ethnic
studies students' attendance rates were 21 percentage points higher,
they earned more points toward graduation, and their grade-point
averages rose by 1.4 points. Students made the biggest gains in science
and math, and boys and Latino students made the greatest improvements.
Jr
Arimboanga, an ethnic studies teacher at John O'Connell High, one of
the schools in the San Francisco study, said confidence and study skills
have increased among students who have taken the classes.
"When
you look at traditional world history that many of our students take,
the textbook is the dominant narrative," Arimboanga said. "It focuses on
a Eurocentric experience. People of color are mentioned in negative or
simplified ways. The African American experience only starts with
slavery and forgets the previous rich history in Africa. Latinos and
Mexican American students often have a paragraph around the
Mexican-American War, but don't read about the native experience of
Latinx peoples before colonialism."
His
syllabus includes a screening of "Precious Knowledge," a PBS
documentary about the fight for Mexican American studies in Tucson. The
Arizona school district shut down the program in 2012 after state
officials threatened to withhold more than $14 million for violating a
newly passed law banning courses tailored for a particular ethnic group
or that were deemed to fuel anti-American sentiment.
Then-Arizona
Supt. of Education John Huppenthal said a Tucson class he observed —
where a Che Guevara image hung on a wall and he said a lecture described
Benjamin Franklin as racist — seemed anti-white. Kids "understood the
framework that was being laid out — that Hispanics are the oppressed and
Caucasians are the oppressors. That's very troubling," he
told the Los Angeles Times at the time.
In
response, the district introduced a program for "culturally relevant"
teaching that didn't run afoul of the law but still allowed classes on
government and history with Mexican American and African American
perspectives.
In August, a federal judge in Phoenix
declared
the ban on ethnic studies unconstitutional, saying it violated Latino
students' 1st Amendment "right to receive information and ideas." In
December the same judge banned Arizona from enforcing the law, and cited
Huppenthal's crusade against the courses.
Ethnic studies supporters hailed the decision, hoping it would spur the growth of such programs across the U.S.
But
in Arizona, the subject remains touchy. State education officials said
they want to preserve elements of the ban. Trustees of the Tucson
Unified School District, although given the green light by the federal
judge, held off on resuming Mexican American studies courses last month.
"While
it's growing in California and elsewhere, it's still a controversial
issue here," said school board member Kristel Foster, who sponsored the
proposal to once again allow Mexican American studies. "Every election
here people still ask about Mexican American studies. The ban is gone,
and things have moved in many places nationally, but it's still having
an effect here."
