The Voices curriculum the San Francisco school board “adopted” for ethnic studies is an ideological snapshot in time from almost six decades ago.
I wish it weren’t so.
Had SFUSD permitted students, parents, and the public to review the material as is legally required, they would have found enough unsubstantiated ideology to think it crawled out of a pipe on Haight Street.
The substantive content is tangled up in a philosophical haze that taints the content, however well researched and extensive it might be.
Why was ethnic studies created?
Ethnic studies grew out of a movement in the 1960s based on the premise that public schools were not properly teaching about the cultures of marginalized students: Black, Asian-Americans, American Indians, and Latino students. It was Eurocentric.
All of this was true. But it isn’t true anymore.
My point is simple: The original reasons for ethnic studies as a separate, mandated class no longer exist in California.
Multiethnic cultures not taught in schools?
Voices asserts, for example, that the experiences of Blacks, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos do not shape the telling of history for most students. For the more than six million students in California, this is simply not true. As early as second grade, California’s history/social sciences standards mandate that schools teach about all cultures.
In second grade, California students learn about the power of individual action leading to change through the stories of, among others, Sitting Bull, George Washington Carver, Abraham Lincoln, Sally Ride, and Albert Einstein.
In third grade, California students learn about American leaders who took risks to protect and extend our freedoms, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
In eighth grade, California students learn about the quest for freedom, anti-slavery movements, relations with Mexico, and the implications of westward expansion both in the 19th century (Cherokee Trail of Tears) and today (lives of Mexican Americans).
Institutional racism in schools?
Voices also asserts that schools themselves are not immune from institutionalized racism and that biases are built into the operation of schools. Discrimination, for example, can be built into education systems because some people get better access to resources.
But lost in that dated stereotypical description are the financial practices required by law and followed by our San Francisco public schools. More money goes to schools with low-income students, English learners, and foster youth.
The original reasons for ethnic studies as a separate, mandated class no longer exist in California.
California’s Education Code directs governing boards only to adopt instructional materials that “accurately portray the cultural and racial diversity of our society.” Instruction must not promote a discriminatory bias on the basis of race or ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, nationality, or sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic. California Education Code Section 51500
California Department of Education’s list of teaching books for schools is multiethnic reflecting the broad diversity of California’s school population.
When there is bias, there are legal remedies, such as actions brought against school districts for discrimination in ethnic studies curriculum and teaching.
The table below gives you a taste of the extensive standards for multiethnic representation in California history and social studies classes.
It’s long. But that’s the point.
Sampling of history/social studies standards in California
| Second grade | Students understand the importance of individual action and character and explain how heroes from long ago and the recent past have made a difference in others’ lives (e.g., from biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Louis Pasteur, Sitting Bull, George Washington Carver, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Jackie Robinson, Sally Ride). |
| Third grade | Describe the lives of American heroes who took risks to secure our freedoms (e.g., Anne Hutchinson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr.). |
| Eighth grade | Study the lives of black Americans who gained freedom in the North and founded schools and churches to advance their rights and communities. Describe the leaders of the movement to abolish slavery (e.g., John Quincy Adams and his proposed constitutional amendment, John Brown and the armed resistance, Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, Benjamin Franklin, Theodore Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass). Describe the lives of free blacks and the laws that limited their freedom and economic opportunities. Describe the purpose, challenges, and economic incentives associated with westward expansion, including the concept of Manifest Destiny (e.g., the Lewis and Clark expedition, accounts of the removal of [American] Indians, the Cherokees’ “Trail of Tears,” settlement of the Great Plains) and the territorial acquisitions that spanned numerous decades. Discuss Mexican settlements and their locations, cultural traditions, attitudes toward slavery, land-grant system, and economies. Describe the Texas War for Independence and the Mexican-American War, including territorial settlements, the aftermath of the wars, and the effects the wars had on the lives of Americans, including Mexican[-] Americans today. |
| 11th grade (U.S. history is a required course for U.C. admissions.) | Analyze the international and domestic events, interests, and philosophies that prompted attacks on civil liberties, including the Palmer Raids, Marcus Garvey’s “back-to-Africa” movement, the Ku Klux Klan, immigration quotas, and the responses of organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Anti-Defamation League to those attacks. Describe the Harlem Renaissance and new trends in literature, music, and art, with special attention to the work of writers (e.g., Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes). Describe the significance of Mexican immigration and its relationship to the agricultural economy, especially in California. Explain how the demands of African Americans helped produce a stimulus for civil rights, including President Roosevelt’s ban on racial discrimination in defense industries in 1941, and how African Americans’ service in World War II produced a stimulus for President Truman’s decision to end segregation in the armed forces in 1948. Examine and analyze the key events, policies, and court cases in the evolution of civil rights, including Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, and California Proposition 209. Describe the collaboration on legal strategy between African American and white civil rights lawyers to end racial segregation in higher education. Examine the roles of civil rights advocates (e.g., A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, Thurgood Marshall, James Farmer, Rosa Parks), including the significance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and “I Have a Dream” speech. Discuss the diffusion of the civil rights movement of African Americans from the churches of the rural South and the urban North, including the resistance to racial desegregation in Little Rock and Birmingham, and how the advances influenced the agendas, strategies, and effectiveness of the quests of American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans for civil rights and equal opportunities. Analyze the passage and effects of civil rights and voting rights legislation (e.g., 1964 Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act of 1965) and the Twenty-fourth Amendment, with an emphasis on equality of access to education and to the political process. Analyze the women’s rights movement from the era of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the movement. |
For the first time, San Francisco families are now seeing the Voices curriculum. No wonder it was kept out of public view. It is stunning to see how the authors grant themselves sweeping privilege to categorize millions of families and rob them of their individual and cultural identities and contributions.
According to the writers of the Voices curriculum:
In a system of White hegemony, such as the United States, White people are the dominant group and exert influence over others. As immigration changed the US social hierarchy, groups including Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Asian Americans and Jewish Americans have experienced ‘Whitening’ — or being absorbed into the expanding category of being called White.
In the world of the Voices curriculum writers, “whiteness” is the model aspired to by all. Yet, people want to be valued for who they really are, whether that’s Asians wanting to be Asians or Jews wanting to be Jews.
People of influence and power want to be valued for who they really are: Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kamala Harris.
The Voices curriculum discusses “cultural appropriation” with similarly selective insensitivity. It describes “cultural appropriation” as taking an element of another’s culture without authority. The authors actually use the word “stealing” in terms of appropriation. I’m going to remember that the next time I have a bagel and a latte.
Should 13- and 14-year-old students entering high school for the first time be castigated for what they are wearing, what they are eating or even for what they are asking their new friends about?
These are just a few examples from the Voices curriculum that underscore the warning from Stanford Professor Thomas Dee, an ethnic studies proponent, that without intensive teacher training, ethnic studies can have unintended and negative consequences. SFUSD plans just one full day of teacher training before school starts.
As Californians, we all have work to do to strengthen our institutions, combat discrimination and promote mutual respect. High on that list of responsibilities is training the next generation for their aspiring leadership roles.
SFUSD should take the time to approve an ethnic studies course that reflects California education in 2025. We need a course that encourages critical thinking and values the cultures of all our children. So far we have failed.
What do you think? Let your school board hear your voice.
Editor’s note: Some ethnicity terms used in this article reflect historical descriptors. Those and others that are listed verbatim in the table above from the California Education Code do not list ethnicities in a consistent manner (e.g., blacks, African Americans, and others), are not in accordance with the editorial style of The Voice.