Local school officials are keeping an eye on a revised framework for history and social science curriculum for California’s K-12 schools that for the first time includes contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans and people with disabilities.
Along with praise from L.G.B.T. advocates, the framework—approved by the state Board of Education earlier last month—was met with calls by Mexican-American and Latino advocates to beef up portions dedicated to ethnic studies, particularly concerning their communities’ history.
The framework, based on California’s History-Social Science Standards adopted in 1988, guides teachers in shaping their own curricula. It illustrates both course materials and instruction methods that teachers might use to meet state and Common Core standards.
State officials and educators who drafted the framework said it provides recommendations for how teachers can utilize an “inquiry-based” approach that compels students to engage in analyzing both the facts of events and why those events have become codified as history, rather than simply inculcating historical facts and dates. It incorporates more than 20 detailed classroom examples that show teachers how they can integrate into their instruction ways to build students’ history and social science knowledge and skills, literacy skills and English-language development.
“We really see the [framework] as the beginning of a discussion, not as a way to limit debate,” said Tom Adams, the deputy superintendent of the Department of Education’s instruction and learning support branch. “Rather than telling students, ‘Here is a body of knowledge that you need to know,’ we’ve actually said that ‘We need you to understand how people create knowledge in each of these disciplines.’”
The board unanimously approved the revisions at a hearing on July 14 in Sacramento, at which nearly 250 audience members gave comments for four hours—“a new record,” quipped the board’s president, Michael Kirst. Guidelines for how publishing companies should produce new textbooks will come to the board for approval in November 2017.
The framework now includes L.G.B.T. historical figures, events and cultural awareness and recommendations for policies to address bullying against L.G.B.T. students. Those inclusions, among many others, reflect what drafters believe to be the framework’s new focus on cultural diversity in California, which many L.G.B.T. advocates say is a critical step toward fending off social injustice.
“California’s students will soon have the privilege of learning this perspective early on in their education, and I am certain it will allow L.G.B.T. students of color—such as myself—to become more engaged and take pride in an accurate U.S. history that’s reflective of their own diverse American identities,” said Mya Berkeley, a college junior who spoke at the hearing. “This is one of the many ways California’s new groundbreaking L.G.B.T. history framework will positively impact students for years to come.”
In addition to those changes, the framework incorporates new sections on civic and service learning, voter education, financial literacy, environmental studies, Ancient India, Filipino-American contributions to the farm-labor movement and World War II, the Baton Death March, the Bracero Program, the Armenian genocide and Barack Obama’s presidency.
But while L.G.B.T. advocates and others praised the revisions, dozens of Mexican-American and Latino advocates implored the board to place greater emphasis on ethnic studies, particularly the impacts of colonialism and cultural hegemony on their community and on Native American populations.
Their calls came amidst a bill currently passing through the state legislature that would require the Department of Education’s Instructional Quality Commission to draft a model curriculum in ethnic studies as a guide for school districts. (Whereas the new framework provides guidance for how local districts might shape their own curricula, the bill would direct the instructional quality commission to craft a specific ethnic-studies curriculum that school districts could adopt.)
“In order to be successful, we need to know our heritage and our background, and be able to accept ourselves as well as know other cultures,” Angeles Cruz, a graduate of Casa Grande High School in Petaluma, said at the hearing. “I believe that ethnic studies should not be a privilege: it should be a right.”
That issue hits home in West Marin, where the region’s largest school district—Shoreline Unified—boasts a majority Latino student population. According to West Marin School principal Matt Nagle, students attend weekly Spanish classes in which they learn about Mexican and Mexican-American cultures. Students also take classes on world cultures and participate in special events, such as Día de Los Muertos, Cinco de Mayo and assemblies focused on multiculturalism at the Dance Palace.
But textbooks could go much further to address gaps in Mexican-American history instruction, said Mr. Nagle, who found that subject desperately lacking when he taught fourth grade 20 years ago. In particular, he believes more emphasis should be placed on learning about the Mexican-American War, to which only three or four pages is devoted in the current fourth-grade textbook.
“That war gave birth to our state, whether we like it or not,” he said. “I’d also like to see Chicano history to go beyond the contributions of just Cesar Chavez.”
Despite those shortcomings, Mr. Nagle and other West Marin school officials praised the new framework. They expressed excitement about its focus on cultural equity and vowed to play key roles in providing recommendations for how their boards of trustees should develop revised courses and adopt new textbooks—a task assigned to individual school boards.
“As a former history teacher myself, it’s satisfying to see curriculum that highlights the contributions from minority communities, particularly in the struggle for equality,” Laura Shain, the principal at Lagunitas School District, wrote in an email to the Light. “Our students will be better prepared to continue the efforts needed to create inclusive and safe communities for all.”
While local school districts will develop their own revised curricula to meet the framework’s standards, the Marin County Office of Education plans to meet with county superintendents, principals and teachers to unpack the framework and provide guidance for selecting new textbooks once they are published.
Raquel Rose, the Office of Education’s assistant superintendent, said her office will first examine the framework’s suggestions on instruction methods in order to develop strategies for encouraging teachers to utilize more thematic-based, critical-thinking instruction linked to specific historical events to give students an expansive understanding of why history happened as it did.
“It’s the notion of looking at cases and situations and building knowledge with kids. How would they absorb that information, how would they do things differently and how would they share knowledge among each other?” Ms. Rose said. “It’s more about getting kids to engage in discourse so that they can express their own thoughts.”