Earlier this week, members of the State Board of Education stated that the current draft of the plan to teach high school students ethnic studies “falls short and needs to be substantially redesigned.” As a result, California’s plan has been put on pause.
The criticism of the plan calls the draft biased, overly politically correct, and anti-Semitic. The draft includes slang such as “cis heteropatriarchy” and “hxr story.” Furthermore, the proposal presents capitalism as a form of oppression or power in coexistence with white supremacy and racism.
Members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus stood by California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond in skewering the plan in a letter Thurmond sent to the department last month. In the letter, Thurmond stated that “there was no intentional omission of the experiences of Jewish Americans.”
The State Board of Education president, vice president, and a board member released a statement earlier this week stating that the “curriculum should be accurate, free of bias, appropriate for all learners in our diverse state, and align with Governor Newsom’s vision of a California for all.”
This statement was released in response to thousands of comments made by the public to the department. Many people have called for revisions to the draft as well, including the author of the 2016 law, which was passed to develop the curriculum.
Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson commented on the draft, saying “we need to teach kindness, we need to teach empathy, we need to teach compassion because children are not born as bigots and so its critically important that we get this curriculum right.” With California being ranked 37th in the nation for public education, these changes are for the politicians to feel better about themselves rather than focus on providing better education for California students.
Photo by Joanna Kosinska
