February 15, 2024 - 8:00pm
California’s ethnic studies course has become a political minefield, and the latest round of fighting offers a warning to the rest of the US.
The state’s model curriculum for ethnic studies, which will become mandatory for California high school students next year, is explicitly meant to encourage activism. Teachers are to “make suggestions for ways that students can participate in service learning or activism in their school or local community” and teach them “how to gain political power through activism, organization, and mobilization”, according to the curriculum.
It covers a broader scope of identity issues than college courses, which traditionally focus on black, Hispanic, Asian and Native Americans. Ethnic studies scholars, who consider the inclusion of Jews without lessons on the Israel-Palestine conflict inappropriate, are outraged by the curriculum, according to a New York Times report. Meanwhile, efforts at the local level to incorporate “liberated ethnic studies,” which excludes antisemitism and promotes the Palestinian cause, have inspired multiple lawsuits.
Key concepts throughout the course include racial profiling, police brutality, “indigeneity”, settler colonialism, environmental justice, imperialism, genocide, language revitalisation, self determination, land acknowledgment and environmental racism.
The California curriculum has undergone major revisions since its introduction in 2019, prompted by complaints from various ethnic groups, and now includes Sikhs, Armenians and Mizrahi Jews in addition to lessons touching on Japanese internment, California farm workers and anti-Arab bias.
The fight in California is a harbinger for ethnic studies conflicts that will roll out across the US over the coming years. Ethnic studies courses have been authorised or required in seven states and the District of Columbia. The Advanced Placement program, which offers college level courses to about 2.5 million American high schoolers annually in 23,000 schools, has an African American studies course in the pilot stage and will make the class available to all US schools later this year.
The course landed in the crosshairs of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who pressured the College Board, which runs the AP program, into making substantial changes to the program, including the removal of sections promoting reparations, prison abolition and intersectionality. The course is nonetheless expected to be an opportunity for teachers to go off course with politically and racially charged lessons.
The push for further racial representation in school curriculum comes amid declining educational outcomes and soaring costs. California is a case study for this phenomenon. Among the state’s eighth graders, only 30% are proficient in reading, while 28% of Californians over the age of 15 are illiterate. About 160,000 students left the state’s public school system in the school years beginning in 2019 and 2020. Meanwhile, a consulting firm called “Woke Kindergarten” has been raking in money training public school teachers in San Francisco on racism.
As public education systems focus on social justice themes, it is black and Hispanic students who are consistently hit the hardest when schools perform poorly.
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SubscribeAs one of largest ethnic group 17% in the USA, teaching about German-American history and contributions should be a priority under this curriculum.
Yes it should. And so should irish american. And Italian American. And Polish American. And Scots Irish American and of course the biggest contributors of all… the Anglo American. Dilute the shyte out of the ethnic studies bull and see it shrink on the vine.
Well and truly letting the sectarian genie out of the bottle, aren’t they?
It’s a stark example that the globalist idea is to destroy any sense of legitimate national identity and purpose, make ethnic/racial entitlement the basis of competing claims to societal capital, and then squeeze the energy base (net zero) to ramp up discontent.
I’m not sure if it’s due to ideological blindness that the architects of this process can’t join the dots, or they really think it serves their interests (e.g. overthrow of “white supremacy” will deliver utopia) to willingly collapse their society into a boiling cauldron of inter-ethnic violence. Whatever, non-“progressive” Californian readers here should cut their losses and get out.
Sound advice. It is beyond comprehension that so many have fallen and continue to fall for this vile ideology. Clearly the marriage of corporatism with Marxism has spawned a type of fascism that is going to be virtually impossible to destroy for it has spread far and wide across the west and has captured academia and most institutions, some places are just a little behind the curve but I’m not sure how they will hold out for much longer. Unfortunately there will be no allied forces coming to the rescue this time and soon no place to run unless things change radically and soon.
In response to the question implied in your last paragraph:
I’ve always noticed that certain people like to spread chaos wherever they go. Upsetting the apple cart seems to them to be both a good tactic and a good strategy. But deep down it’s just an elemental part of their personality.
So that leaves the question “How did we get captured by these nuts?”
Luckily we’re a flighty, twitchy sort of species. This will all pass, eventually, like wife swapping or the Bee Gees.
The capture occurred when US President Johnson attempted to draft the children of the elite into a colonial war of choice: Vietnam. The elite refused to be drafted. They did not want to be called cowards and therefore had to come up with exalted ideologies to excuse their draft dodging. These ideologies became the source of WOKE. It began in the Universities and spread through all of the elite institutions that are fed by elite colleges.
This could only be considered ‘education’ in a culture hollowed of all purposive meaning
Just 7% of US 15 – 16 year olds attain Level 5 or 6 in the PISA mathematics test. This is below the OECD average (mainly made up of countries far poorer than the US), and compares to 41% in Singapore, 32% in Taiwan, 29% in Macao, 27% in Hong Kong, and 23% in Japan and South Korea. American students are less likely than the OECD average to report feeling in physical danger on their way to school, but are significantly more likely to report feeling in danger in the classroom or in common areas at school. The US will produce social justice warriors who not only can’t think for themselves, but can’t read or count properly either. This is what the US has consistently voted for over the past 30 years, and judging on a string of recent Democratic Party special election victories, they’re going to continue voting for it.
Sadly, it is too late to reverse this. Previous generations educated in classical Enlightenment-style liberalism were exposed to a canon of Western tradition that they were free to embrace or reject or reject in their avant garde youth and later embrace. A couple of generations now have had no exposure to this vast cultural tradition and, consequently, cannot return to it even if they someday find their outlook wanting. Their destiny is to wilt like cut flowers removed from the roots to which they owe everything.
The US race to the bottom accelerates, led by…you guessed it: California! When Americans of European ancestry finally die out–from opioid overdoses and voluntary neutering for gender reassignment–those ethnic groups who remain will turn upon one another as they swirl the drain into Republic of South Africa-style anarchy. Meanwhile, China will continue its three millennial culture free of settler-colonial guilt or nonsense about diversity.
I tend to agree. This will all be further accelerated by other civilizations observing what goes wrong in the west and deciding to not make the same mistakes as the west.
In the People’s Republic of China, the government has affirmative action policies for its 55 ethnic minorities. These include preferential treatment in education, employment, business, politics and territorial matters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China
Perhaps you might forward that link to the Uyghurs; they seem not to be benefitting from their “preferential treatment”.
Several California school districts have adopted the “Liberated” ethnic studies curricula which emphasize educating students in treating certain classes of people as “oppressors” and others as “oppressed”. The Liberated curricula generally includes anti-Israel material. Lawsuits are now pending to block the Liberated curricula..
The program is purposely divisive. The more attention that is paid to its ridiculousness, the less attention that is given to the pathetic performance results among students. Of course, they want to train activists. The last thing authoritarians want is to teach people how to think or question or be skeptical of what they’re told. The great American experiment is approaching its death rattle phase. The fundamental transformation that was promised us by that empty suit years ago is dawning.
Intersectionality. One, truly stupid concept. We saw the ‘Queers’ (whatever they may be, but not gay) supporting fellow Gazan victims. Didn’t end too well during the London marches did it?
How is all this nonsense helping with education. I remember learning French (my own language), math and English, with a smattering of history, geography, science and art and this kept us busy enough. If we wanted to find out about the world, we’d read our parents newspapers and, later, bought our own or went online. Politics have no room in a classroom as there is every chance that it will be ideological.
How is all this nonsense helping with education. — It’s not helping and I suggest that’s the point. I’m open to being persuaded otherwise, but when kids are barely literate upon high school graduation but can speak endlessly about who’s oppressed and how many genders exist, persuasion will be difficult. Politics ARE the classroom of today.
American schools in most of the red-state regions are still fairly moderate politically, often staffed by returning members of the same or very similar fairly conservative communities. The trouble is the wildly politicized material they’re offered (and required) to use in the classroom that is sourced from a textbook industry slavishly devoted to the same Woke principles popular in campus schools of education – as that’s where textbook recommendations come from. And then the problem is made worse by education Ph.D. administrators in even rural school systems being much more in tune with the the ed schools than the teachers, and easily able to flummox even well-meaning elected school board members into approving curriculum materials that are far from even-handed when examined closely.
In some areas, math is racist, grades are racist, gender is fluid, people are either oppressed or oppressors and climate is one of the new religions. Welcome to education in many parts of the United States. Lagging test scores? Reward the failing school districts with more money, that helps fund richer compensation packages for the unionized teachers who want no accountability for student performance. The two main education unions in the US, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association are among the largest donors to Democratic candidates, and were major supporters of COVID lockdowns of schools, further screwing up the mental health of many young people.
There is some hope as some states offer vouchers for parents to send their children to private or in some cases religious schools, or the help pay for home schooling expenses.
Ethnic studies are political indoctrination courses and in some cases requirements for graduation. Some colleges are beginning to require similar courses for graduation also. Then applications to graduate or professional schools require demonstrations of adherence to CRT principles (ask most any US medical student).
As Ex Niliho below states, the US will swirl down the drain into Republic of South Africa-style anarchy. We see this with how illegal migrants get a free pass into the US and then enjoy the lax enforcement of laws in major left leaning cities. What a mess!
Key West High School, Class of ’71, here. At the time Florida required seniors to pass a course called “Americanism versus Communism.” It was intended to be indoctrination, a holdover from the McCarthy era. In some cases (mine, for instance) this had the Streisand effect: by the time I got to university I could tell you who Proudhon was, had read the Communist Manifesto (ready to move on to Theses on Feuerbach) and was well-prepped for anti-war radicalization. Might indoctrination backfire in this case too?
Utterly depressing. No words!
God help us all.
Much of the difference between Asian and other races is school is due to biological effects of 4000 years of the Chinese imperial state examinations using a language that required memorizing 20000 characters. Passing the exam made a winner a mandarin. The other way to the top was to become an imperial eunuch. A mandarin got a harem of wives and concubines. A eunuch tended the mandarin’s harem. The mandarin’s children did not starve during China’s frequent famines. Only a nerd could pass these examinations. There was heavy selection pressure toward nerd personalities who learned 20000 characters. In addition, there was major selection pressure favoring females who were sexually attracted to nerds and willing to exist in harems since a mandarin’s concubines’ children did not die in famines. There was heavy selection pressure toward being a Tiger mom who force fed education toward their children to produce mandarins with harems. In Europe there was no such selection pressure toward literacy. Alphabet languages do not require such a high time commitment to obtain literacy, in addition most literate Europeans were celibate Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages. The west has only had about 300 years in which literacy ensured a higher probability of producing adult offspring as opposed to 4000 years for Asia. Selection pressure also favored Toral studying Jewish nerds but to a lesser extent than Asians.