Ethnic studies will be offered in all California high schools by the 2025-26 school year, and will be a graduation requirement by 2030, reports Molly Gibbs for Bay Area News Service. But what will be taught?
Districts are choosing between the state's model curriculum, which calls for “multiple perspectives” on political issues, and a very left-wing "liberated" version written by ethnic studies professors.
"Ethnic studies," as taught in universities, is ideological, explains reports Dana Goldstein in the New York Times.
Describing "various ethnic and racial groups' experiences" is "a bland form of multiculturalism," said Dylan Rodriguez, an ethnic studies scholar at the University of California, Riverside. Ethnic studies should be “a critical analysis of the way power works in societies.”
The model curriculum was a hard-fought compromise, writes Gibbs. The original draft, written by the professors, was rejected for anti-semitism, politically correct jargon and ignoring Jewish, Armenian, Sikh and other communities. Only non-white groups -- which included Arabs but not Jews -- were included. The final draft won approval by including more groups, toning down the anti-capitalist rhetoric and eliminating references to Palestine.
But it's just a model. The original draft -- now "liberated" -- has been adopted in some districts. The curriculum "largely excludes the histories of ethnic groups who may be considered White," writes Gibbs. It's not diverse and certainly not inclusive.
Palestine is back: Israel and the U.S. are the prime examples of "settler colonialism" and must be excoriated. (Most people on earth would have to pick up and move back to where their forebears came from if we took the idea seriously, Bret Stephens points out in the New York Times. A "nation of immigrants" is a nation of land-grabbing expropriators.)
"Liberated also focuses heavily on activism in its student assignments," Gibbs writes. "For one lesson on redlining and U.S. housing discrimination, the course has students write a persuasive letter to county leaders calling for reparations."
I think the ethnic studies requirement should be abandoned. It doesn't have to be done badly, but it probably will be in many places. And there will be lawsuits. Lots of lawsuits. If enough high school students want a Chicano Studies or Asian-American Studies or African-American Studies course, make it an option. If they'd rather take computer science or financial literacy or auto mechanics, leave room in the schedule for that.
Here's Bill Maher on the fact that things change and people sometimes move to other places.