California schools mandated to teach ethnic studies

By Louis Chan
REPRINTED FROM ASAM NEWS

WITH LITTLE FANFARE, Governor Jerry Brown of California has signed a bill requiring every school district and charter school to offer an ethnic studies class in high school.

The bill becomes effective in the 2020-21 school year, giving school districts time to develop their curriculum.

It was authored by Assemblymember Luis Alejo (D-Salinas Valley) who is chair of the California Latino Legislative Caucus. The course would teach about the historic contributions and struggles of Asian/Americans, African/Americans, Latinos and other minorities in the United States. It’s a counterweight to the Eurocentric courses currently offered in most schools.

“AB 2016 will give California public high school districts and charter schools a comprehensive ethnic studies curriculum that will be available to all students as an elective,” Alejo said. 

RELATED:

• Gov. Nikki Haley needs to take an ethnic studies course 
• Governor Brown vetoes ethnic studies bill

“The development of a comprehensive ethnic studies curriculum acknowledges the diversity of California, which has the most ethnically diverse public school student body in the nation. After recent studies, we now have conclusive evidence that ethnic studies courses have helped students of color remain academically engaged and have improved test scores and graduation rates.”

The bill puts the rest of the state closer in line with the Los Angeles Unified and San Francisco Unified School Districts which have both added ethnic studies courses in recent years. The cities of Oakland and San Diego are in the process of doing the same.

The governor’s signature comes a year after he vetoed a similar bill by Alejo. At the time, Brown said Alejo’s bill was redundant because another state panel was already looking into revising curriculum standards.

The move was roundly criticized at the time.

“Ethnic studies are not just for students of color,” Alejo said this year. “We should give all students the opportunity to prepare for a diverse global economy, diverse university campuses and diverse workplaces.”

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Waiting for California Gov. Jerry Brown to sign 3 bills into law

California's Gov. Jerry Brown has hundreds of bills to sign this term.

WE'RE WAITING, trying to be patient, but we can't help that a little bit of doubt is starting to creep in.

California's Gov. Jerry Brown has three bills on his desk, waiting for his signature. There are three that are special significance to the AAPI communities.

AB1066 - Overtime for farmworkers
Championed by Latino and Asian American legislators, this bill was authored by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez. The legislation would give farmworkers the same protections as most of the American workforce. They would get overtime pay for working more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week. Right now, farmworkers operate under antiquated laws that don't pay overtime unless they work more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week. If signed into law, it would be the first such law in the nation. While the number of Filipinos in the fields have dwindled, in recent years there has been an influx of Hmong and Sikh immigrants who were farmers in their home countries and familiar with the physical demands of agricultural demands of agricultural work. It is opposed by powerful agricultural interests that the governor has supported in recent years. Brown vetoed an earlier version of the bill in June so it is uncertain where he stands on this version.

AB1736 - Disaggregated data collection
The AAPI community is often looked at one monolithic block when in reality there are dozens of languages and scores of nationalities and cultures. There are wide disparities in education, wealth and physical well-being, access to health care. Unfortunately, there is little data that support the differences we know exist. The differences are masked by the model minority myth that is assigned to everyone who have Asian or Pacific Island heritages. This bill authored by Filipino/American legislator, Assemblyman Rob Bonta, passed the Assembly and Senate with ease. The Accounting for Health and Education in Asian Pacific Islander Demographics Act is also known as the AHEAD Act. It is backed by AAPI civil rights and health organizations in the state. The bill would include more ethnicities in the Asian American label. According to the bill, the state would be required to collect data for Bangladeshi, Hmong, Indonesian, Pakistani, Taiwanese, Thai and other ethnicities.

Surprisingly, it has met some opposition from Chinese/Americans, largely recent immigrants, who fear that the law would be a back door to dismantling California's law forbidding the use of racially based affirmative action. To allay these fears and to hopefully ensure passage, Bonta has amended the bill to exclude the educational component. Brown vetoed a similar bill sponsored by Bonta last year.

AB2016 - Ethnic studies in high school
California has one of the largest and most diverse student populations in the nation. Ethnic minorities account for over 71 percent of the student population, with more than 90 languages spoken in the state’s school districts. A model curriculum would be developed to act as a guide which local school districts can adapt for their particular population. It allows diverse student body to learn something about their own and other people's culture in the context of California history. It gives local districts wide leeway to adapt the material to their students. The curricula could be taught in different fields of discipline, history, social sciences or the language arts.

AB2016  is endorsed by the State Superintendent of Schools Tom Torlakson, who wrote: "It is especially important that students build knowledge of the various racial and ethnic groups in our state. Incorporating ethnic studies courses into standard high school curriculum is a means to accomplish this. In doing so, students gain an encompassed outlook on other cultures while learning respect and tolerance. Additionally, it provides students with the opportunity to learn about their respective culture in the context of California’s history."

Gov. Brown has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto any of the hundreds pf bills on his desk. If he hasn't vetoed a bill and he doesn't sign the legislation by the end of the month, it automatically becomes law.

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Agreement reached for SF State's ethnic studies

Some students and faculty of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University.

IT LOOKED something like a scene from 1969 on the San Francisco State University with a maelstrom involving student protests, ethnic studies and an Asian/American president. The only thing missing - thank goodness - were the jackbooted, baton-wielding SWAT teams.

Last week, an agreement was reached that will strengthen the existence of the College of Ethnic Studies.

In a letter addressed to the students and faculty and "our Ethnic Studies family around the world," and signed by SFSU President Leslie Wong, the university administration reached an agreement with four students who have been staging a hunger strike for 10 days. The letter agreed to 11 of the 26 demands, including reallocating funding for two full-time tenure track faculty appointments in Africana Studies, reallocating funding for four work-study student positions, working towards departmental status for the Race and Resistance Studies program, and developing a program in Pacific Islander Studies. The agreement will result "in the additional investment of $482,806 in support of advancing the College — in addition to the $250,000 commitment for AY 2016-17 earlier already made by the President."

“It’s disappointing that it took a hunger strike and that it took 10 days into a hunger strike to get it to these negotiations,” said Sofia Cardena to the Golden Gate Xpress. She is an organizer for the Defend and Advance Ethnic Studies movement, which rallied student support for the college. “Even though we didn’t get everything we wanted, I think we can still call this a victory.”

On day nine of the hunger strike by four students, one of them had to be hospitalized. The next day, the compromise agreement returning some was announced.

The College, born out of the Third World Strike of 1969 when S.I. Hayakawa was president, was threatened earlier this year by what students felt was disproportionate budget cuts that would have devastated the college. While many colleges have departments of ethnic studies, SFSU is the only campus giving college status to ethnic studies.

According to the most recent data from SF State’s 2015 Data Book, with 232 students enrolled in the College of Ethnic Studies in Fall 2014, less than one percent of the University, it is one of the smallest colleges on campus.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

Post on the St. Louis World Fair and the Igorots became one of best read stories

EDITORS at AsAm News were surprised that a story about the Philippines exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair became the second-most best-read stories in 2015. It also has been one of best read stories in this blog, too. Out of hundreds of stories over the two years of Views From The Edge, it ranks ninth.

The Philippines exhibit at the fair featured six "tribes" from the Philippines, including a tribe of Igorots, one of the mountain peoples of Luzon. It is a little known chapter in our American journey and another example of propping up the idea of American exceptionalism and to justify its imperialistic ambitions.

Unfortunately, it was America's first up-close and personal look at Filipinos and it left an everlasting impression on the American psyche of barely clothed "savages" who had dogs as a major part of their diet. That image affected how European/Americans thought about the  subsequent waves of immigration from the Philippines, from the sugar cane workers in the early part of the 20th century all the way to the waves of medical and tech workers of the last two decades of that same century.

I'm sure Filipino/Americans who read the story felt mixed feelings. I know my parents' generation's reaction would be one of horror; their amor propio demeaned. "That's not us. That's only a tiny part of the Philippines. We wear clothes."

I suspect that younger Filipino/Americans would embrace their indigenous heritage with pride and feel incensed at how their predecessors/ancestors were treated like animals in a zoo.

The high interest in the post points out the strong need for an accurate telling of American history with all its warts instead of a means to make one group of people feel better about themselves at the expense of people of color. At the very least, it would teach some humility.

For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, go to AsAm News.

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Ethnic studies bill vetoed by California governor

CALIFORNIA'S governor misses the point of ethnic studies. I'm disappointed that last week, California's Gov. Brown vetoed AB 101, which would have required developing a curriculum of ethnic studies in in California schools.

Brown called the bill unnecessary and "redundant" because, he says, ethnic studies guidelines are already being devised for California's schools.

Brown can be so frustrating sometimes. He is progressive enough to approve a ban for schools to use of a derogatory name for the First Americans for their school mascot or athletic team; but then he'll turn around and not see the value of ethnic studies and why it needs legislation.

California's students will have to wait until college before they are introduced to "real" history, before they realize that people of color can write books, invent things to improve our quality of life or that the white perspective is not the only way to look at the world, not only in a social context but also in other areas such as STEM, the economy or politics.

I attended a high school that is highly diversified. Today, no ethnic group holds the majority. In my work I come across graduates from my alma mater who agree that one of the most valuable things they learned by attending this California high school is how to get along with all kinds of different peoples. They felt that high school experience prepared them for the real world.

As our high schools become more segregated by the haves and have-nots; which more times than not, translates to mean white-majority schools vs. schools with a majority of its students are Latino, Asian or African/Americans; it becomes even more critical that we learn about each other, our different perspectives, our diverse culture and the different roads we travel on.

It is not divisive as some critics have claimed. If anything, it makes us more aware and that simplistic explanations for the way some people were treated, i.e. the Japanese internment during World War II, were not that simple.

Until our schools teach history - with all its flaws as well as its accomplishments and stops ignoring the impact of those flaws on people of color - we will need ethnic studies to counterbalance the warped view that is currently being presented to our students. Waiting for college to become enlightened may be too late because not everybody goes to college.

The carrying on by supporters of presidential candidate Donald Trump and the totally inaccurate statements by other GOP candidates is the product of the one-sided point of view presented by today's history texts.

The accurate telling of history is even more critical today when conservative activists are trying to rewrite history by soft-pedaling slavery,  i.e. calling African captives brought to the U.S. "workers" instead of "slaves;" saying the cause of the Civil War was over "states rights" instead of "slavery."

In California's public schools today, there are more students of color than whites. Are we telling the "minorities" - or the new majority - that their histories don't matter? How does that shape their place in the world? Are they forever grateful to the Euro/Americans for allowing us to live in the world that textbooks tell us was created by Europe's descendants? Do think less of themselves because their writers, thinkers, scientists, activists and educators aren't worth mentioning in the school books?

If this bill was in effect, it would not have been necessary for Assemblymember Rod Bonta to introduce a bill mandating that the Filipino role in the 1965 Grape Strike be included in the studies of labor or history.

We urge the authors of AB 101, led by author Assemblymember Luis Alejo, to reintroduce this measure in the next session.

The proposal to teach ethnic studies in our schools is not some radical proposal. The social and academic value of ethnic studies curricula is well documented. We Americans are not always the good guys. Knowing that we're not always on the right side teaches us humility and maybe it keeps us from using our military might to intervene where we have no business being. Everyone benefits, in all disciplines, when the truth is told.

California bill would put ethnic studies into schools, but the governor hesitates ...

An assembly at a California high school shows the diversity in the state's student body.

GROWING UP in an immigrant household, I remember my parents would always refer to our white neighbors as the "Americans."

This was funny, because my father fought for the U.S. during World War II and defended the Stars and Stripes in Korea and worked for the the city we lived in. How American can you get?

The image they had of themselves were as foreigners - not "Americans."

In school, we were told about our American forefathers, Manifest Destiny, the building of the transcontinental railroad, about grand ideas, inventions and bravery of historical figures, all of whom were European descendants. It's no wonder we held "Americans" in such high regard. No wonder the Euro-Americans hold themselves in such high esteem. They built themselves a society in which all the institutions supported and perpetuated this myth.

A California bill awaiting the governor's signature could dramatically change this single-lens perspective.

Assembly Bill 101 seeks to widen the lens through which history and literature  is taught in California schools. Authored by a coalition of Asian, Latino and black lawmakers, including   Assemblyman Chris Holden, Luis Alejo and Rob Bonta, the potentially game-changing bill  was passed by the Assembly and state Senate and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown on Sept. 8.

If the governor signs the bill, it would the first step in easing a lot of tension America is undergoing because the country's shifting demographics wherein we see the white population shrinking and the communities of color getting larger. By 2040, demographers estimate Euro-Americans would be in the minority in California. 

RELATED: Take an ethnic studies class to understand history

A study by Dr. Christine Sleeter revealed that an alarming gap between the real diversity of California’s students and the people students see, read about and read from in these textbooks. For example, despite our state’s diversity, Dr. Sleeter found that “in history/social science [textbooks], representation of whites ranged from 41-80 percent, African-Americans from 2-28 percent, Latinos from 0-4 percent, American Indians from 1-10 percent, and Asian-Americans from 0-8 percent.” Compare these percentages to the 2014 student demographics in San Diego Unified School District: 23 percent white, 10 percent African-American, 46 percent Latino, .3 percent American Indian and 3 percent Asian-American."

What school children of color learn is that their fathers, grandparents or ancestors have not contributed to the greatness of this country and that they should be grateful that the Euro-Americans have allowed them to enjoy the benefits of being an American. In a state like California where the student body is 75% students of color, shifting the viewpoint would have a powerful impact on their self-image and the way their communities fit in the making of this country.  

Assembly Bill 101 notes:

"Based on the National Education Association (NEA) publication, The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies, the inclusion of ethnic studies in a curriculum has a positive impact on pupils of color. 

"Ethnic studies benefit pupils in observable ways, such as pupils becoming more academically engaged, increasing their performance on academic tests, improving their graduation rates, and developing a sense of self-efficacy and personal empowerment.

AB101 would create a blue-ribbon advisory body to come up with recommendations on how to broaden the state's K-12 curriculum. In its original version, the bill would have mandated the inclusion of ethnic studies in high school.

Huffpost graphic

A 2011 study concluded that a curriculum that integrated ethnic studies into a school’s regular studies is more likely to positively impact students’ racial attitudes than occasional assemblies or erratic programs.

Thandeka K. Chapman & Tricia M. Gallagher-Geurtsen with the California Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education, San Diego regional network, wrote an opinion piece for the San Diego Union Tribune:

"We support AB 101 because developing ethnic studies programs in all of our state’s public high schools is an integral part of cultivating a classroom and social environment that is accepting of diverse cultures and challenges students to become thoughtful consumers of information. It is vital for young people to learn about the many different histories and contributions of Americans, while also feeling like they can change their communities in positive ways. This bill will help close the achievement gap by reducing student truancy, increasing student enrollment, reducing dropout rates and better preparing Californian youth to be college-prepared, career-ready and social-justice oriented."

ACTION ALERT

Unfortunately, the Ethnic Studies Now Coalition says they have heard this bill has lukewarm support by the Governor’s office and with than a week to go, he may veto the bill. Here are two things you can do right now to help passage of AB101:

1. Call Governor Brown at (916) 623-4866
Then dial 1 for English & 4 to speak with a rep. Use/Share this ESN number so we can keep track of how many calls are made.

2. Email Governor Brown:

You can also sign a petition asking the governor to sign AB101

 CLICK HERE