By John Fensterwald, EdSource, February 6, 2020
In a preview of what it will recommend this spring, the California Department of Education is siding with ethnic studies advocates who argue that courses should focus on four ethnic and racial groups whose histories have been largely overlooked in the high school curriculum: African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos and Latinos, and Native Americans.
Ethnic studies examines the social justice struggles and the political and historical forces affecting racial, ethnic and religious groups. Who should be the subject of ethnic studies was one of several controversial issues that derailed a draft last fall of a model high school ethnic studies curriculum that the Legislature ordered the State Board of Education to adopt.
Some ethnic and religious groups had criticized the first draft of more than 350 pages, written by a panel of high school ethnic studies teachers and university experts, for excluding their stories and struggles in America. Jewish leaders criticized the omission of anti-Semitism in the draft and what they characterized as a one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the section on Arab American ethnic studies.
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