California needs ethnic studies - and its controversies
FacebookTwitterEmail
Illustration for Claude Goldenberg piece on ethnic studiesGetty Images/iStockphoto
Almost everyone dislikes the state’s model curriculum for ethnic studies, even its authors. Which is precisely why California should adopt it now.
Anything that California’s usually apathetic adults can argue passionately about state education officials received tens of thousands of public comments on the curriculum is something the kids should learn all about.
Through four years of controversy and multiple reviews and revisions, the curriculum has been perversely unifying, taking fire from many racial, ethnic and religious groups. The left finds it insufficiently revolutionary; the center, too politicized and jargon-laden. The right thinks it’s some kind of conspiracy involving cancel culture. And as the state moves toward making ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement, the curriculum’s own author
How California Is Embracing Mandatory Racial-Injustice Study for All of Its 1 7 Million High Schoolers
theepochtimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theepochtimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
On Anti-Asian Hate Crimes: Who Is Our Real Enemy? - American Renaissance
amren.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from amren.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
February Resource Roundup: 5 Moments of Black & Asian Solidarity
mochimag.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mochimag.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Follow
Updated: Feb. 27, 2021
American Jews recently discovered an indignity their California compatriots had long warned them about: Children in the state were about to be subjected to in-class lessons that demonized and belittled the Jewish people.
Sounding the alarm was veteran journalist Emily Benedek. In her Tablet Magazine article “California is Cleansing Jews from History” last month, she wrote how the state had mandated the establishment of a model ethnic studies curriculum, to be taught at all K-12 public schools.
The curriculum’s first draft, published in 2019, underwent a few different iterations since its release at the behest of Jewish groups who felt excluded from it. But Benedek wrote that even its latest version, published in December, describes Jews as uniquely “privileged,” goes to great lengths to never mention antisemitism in its over 300 pages, assails Israel at every opportunity and props up the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – of whi