As of now, only one in five high schools offer a course on ethnic studies. Legislators are hoping to change that to make the class a requirement for high school graduation.

Currently, there is a debate on what and more importantly who should be included in the course. The curriculum requirement for high schools was delayed after disputes over whether or not the study should include anti-Semitism.

R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, a part of the group Save California Ethnic Studies, and Theresa Montano, a professor of Chicana/Chicano studies at California State University, Northridge, and Vice President of the California Teachers Association, say the curriculum is under attack.

The history of ethnic studies goes back about 50 years ago, when students from San Francisco State University’s Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front got together to demand a series of changes within the curriculum and academia and demanded that Ethnic Studies be taught.

“The focus of Ethnic Studies at that point, which remains the central point today, was that Ethnic Studies was to uncover the voices and the stories of those who were underrepresented and often invisible in the curriculum [comprised of] the four racialized communities of color: Asian-American, African-American, Latinx-Chicano and Indigenous People,” Montano said, “and that it was a curriculum that not only told the stories of those who were untold, but also challenge the very premise of racism. It interrupted racism in America.”

The California Department of Education shows the bulk of students enrolled in grades Kindergarten to grade 12 are Hispanic or Latino, followed by white students.

One of the strengths of ethnic studies is “that it is responsive to all students in the classrooms,” Cuauhtin said. “The Save California Ethnic Studies movement and coalition emerged a couple months ago when controversy emerged with the curriculum that we felt could decenter communities of color from it.” 

He said ethnic studies needs to be saved from being taken away as an academic field.

“[It is a] discipline that is responsive to students and has transformative results with students of color, and all students, and that needs to be respected,” Cuauhtin said.

Montano said the origin of ethnic studies looked at four different groups and is distinct from multi-cultural studies, which would encompass more groups.

“Ethnic Studies is an interdisciplinary study comprised of history, social science, education, political science and language but focused on the four racialized communities of color,” she said. “It’s a viable academic discipline. Each discipline is viable in and of itself. Chicano Studies is a field of itself. So, as a professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies – that is my field of expertise. Multiculturalism is the umbrella that unites everyone in this country and US History courses should already be multi-cultural.”

There is an argument from communities, including the Jewish and Armenian community, who say their history should be included in the curriculum.

“The argument that we are beginning to see is that the overlapping discussion about what’s inclusive and what is supposed to be ethnic study,” Montano said. “Now, on my campus we have very strong departments and I would be the first to defend those departments as cultural and religious studies, but they’re not a part of the same curriculum.”

Teaching ethnic studies in the classroom is about mutual respect and understanding, Cuauhtin, who wrote a book on the subject of ethnic studies, said.

“Humanization and critical consciousness. … Understanding of ourselves, understanding of each other, understanding of our world. Empathy, growing that. That is core and that is present within our curriculum along with the critical consciousness of understanding our place in history, our relationship to times, our relationship to space, to systems of power and navigating all of that,” he said.

Montano said the curriculum is tailored to who lives in a particular area where the study is being taught, referred to as “community responsive,” while never taking the focus off the four racialized communities, but where appropriate, including the stories of other people.

“So, for example, there’s a lesson on residential segregation in the African-American curriculum. I would never take the focus off the hundreds of years of segregation of African-Americans, including residential segregation that continues to this day. But if I were to teach that lesson in Glendale or Fresno, there is no way that I would not address the issue of residential segregation as it applied to Armenian-Americans at one point,” Montano said.

“Bottom line, the most controversial parts of the curriculum account for less than 1 percent of the total draft,” Cuauhtin said. “By so many indicators within the context of Ethnic Studies, over 99 percent of it, is strong, good work – the foundation of how to move forward. There are ways to be more inclusive within an ethnic studies context and we’re doing that work of moving forward with that.”?

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