By Grace Fan (PO ’23)
The need for education reform has never been clearer. From the response of the Trump administration to the Black Lives Matter movement to the outrage and pushback that the movement garnered, Americans must reckon with the pitfalls of their current education system. Schools are where the youth are supposedly introduced to the tools necessary for success and are oftentimes their initiation into learning about the “real” world. Schools are also where students should be learning a factual and unbiased history of our country.
Buried deep into the very foundations of American education, the inception of the United States and its subsequent history have been and continue to be depicted from the perspective of the triumphant and “God-fearing” white settler. While living in Southern California has given me the opportunity to learn from a relatively progressive curriculum, AP courses are inherently structured and centered around the white colonial role. It’s no mistake that Period 1, the section of the curriculum in AP United States History dedicated towards indigenous tribes and culture, features minimally on the final AP test. It’s also no mistake that a lot of information we learn in school about the horrors of slavery is sanitized and censored. Moreover, American historical figures, especially our Presidents, are glorified in an almost godly manner, and we are not taught of their faults and shortcomings. We learn about the Civil Rights movement and we learn about Martin Luther Jr., but we don’t learn about the decades of work that lead to the Civil Rights movement. We learn about Rosa Parks but we do not learn about Claudette Colvin, who just 9 months earlier had also refused to give up her bus seat. We do not learn about the ways in which the government continues to push the Black community down and prevent them from achieving upward mobility before, during, and after the Civil Rights movement. We do not learn about the prison to pipeline system, police brutality, police unions, and qualified immunity. And most importantly, we do not learn about how the government and those serving maintain and perpetuate a discriminatory system.
Now that there has been a greater light shed on the history of the Black struggle in America, legislators have promised to pass policies that would implement a curriculum that is more historically representative and accurate. However, it seems that what was once touted as an utmost ‘priority’ has been set on the backburner.
The San Francisco School District has decided to rename some of their schools. Schools with names like Washington, Lincoln, and other glorified individuals are being re-evaluated for their hurtful actions towards marginalized communities. The school board has voted to rename these schools and find replacement names through a renaming committee. There was one dissenting vote within the San Francisco School Board from Commissioner Kevine Boggess, who was against the general concept of naming institutions after people. In the meeting, he said that “I feel like it’s not helpful for us to make heroes out of mortal folks, and that it sets a bad precedent for us as we try to lift up values. Instead, we lift up people in ways that make it harder to hold them accountable.” And there is truth to this — naming institutions after people, in general, may cause a future renaming process. Why are we naming schools after people in the first place?
While renaming the schools and recognizing the faults of former American heroes is important, one has to wonder how productive and impactful this change will be. The worry is that changes to the educational institution will end at superficial renamings rather than systemic curriculum overhaul. Renaming schools is only the first step. The second and more important step is to educate students on why the name change was made in the first place. A comprehensive and historically accurate curriculum must work in conjunction with the name change in order to truly create systemic educational change.
While some schools are working to rename themselves, other school districts like Irvine Unified School District have adopted various resolutions that “proclaim that Black Lives Matter and calls for an unbiased and inclusive society…” and claim to be committed to “continuing to examine curriculum, staffing and professional training in the spirit of continuous improvement and that this work must be done not just in times of acute awareness.” However, despite this statement of support, the IUSD has not come up with a constructive and clear path to implement an explicitly antiracist and historically accurate curriculum. In a statement made in November of 2020, teachers of IUSD formed an Educators for Social Justice committee to “create social justice goals that reflect and act upon diversity, equity and inclusion which meet the Fair Act and Social Content Standards set by the state.” We have yet to hear more about the committee and what they are setting out to accomplish.
If there continues to be a lack of transparency regarding the progress that the school district and committee have made, the Irvine Unified School District’s supposed commitment towards Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion runs the risk of being purely performative. As important as it is for school districts to acknowledge that Black Lives do matter and to commit to promoting antiracist education (many school districts have failed to do even this), school districts still fail to be transparent about the concrete steps that they are taking. Many of these resolutions were passed in June at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and coincidentally when student activists’ cries for curriculum change were the most prominent and pronounced. Their promise to “do better” and be actively “antiracist” has the possibility of coming off as a compliance tactic. It is encouraging that teachers have formed a committee to meet together and discuss issues within the curriculum, but months after these steps were taken, the lack of updates can be interpreted as a conversation largely put on hold. We cannot let our foot off the gas pedal. The cry for educational reform must be backed by legislators and government officials, and we need to pass policy changes that hold schools accountable to actually re-examining and re-writing academic curriculum at every single educational level. Forming a national committee that works with state legislators and educators to develop a comprehensive and inclusive historical curriculum that is implemented in all 50 states is crucial. It is extremely important for there to be a nationwide movement to standardize and update the curriculum, especially in underserved areas with outdated curricula. Federal oversight combined with inter-state partnerships is the only way that we can combat the disease of ignorance and biases.
