Teachers, activists and parents are arguing over teaching “ethnic studies” in California, a subject that instructs students about oppression in world history, per a recent report.
The subject, which focuses on “Black Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans,” encourages students to learn about “oppression” and apply those lessons to the modern world, The New York Times reported Thursday.
But some teachers are pushing for an altered version of the discipline, known as “liberated ethnic studies.”
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Teachers, activists and parents are arguing over teaching California’s “ethnic studies,” a subject that teaches students about oppression in world history. (Getty Images)
“It is truer to how the subject is taught in colleges, but more politically fraught,” according to the Times. “It largely excludes the histories of ethnic groups, including Jews, who are typically understood as White within the discipline’s context. (Arab American studies is defined as fitting into Asian American studies.)”
“And it offers lessons that are critical of Israel — and, some argue, antisemitic,” the Times reported.
The Israel-Hamas war and debate over a ceasefire has cast a spotlight on ethnic studies, with some arguing that teaching that Israel is a colonizer nation will worsen antisemitism in the state.
“It’s not appropriate to teach students that Jews are colonizers and have engaged in, quote, ‘land-grabbing,’” senior director for national litigation at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) James Pasch said. “That course content will spread antisemitism throughout our high schools.”
By 2030, all California high school students must take ethnic studies in order to graduate. (iStock)
Some pro-ethnic studies advocates, like Dylan Rodriguez, have argued that the new academic discipline is “a critical analysis of the way power works in societies.”
“When Professor Rodriguez was asked if students enrolled in ethnic studies classes should encounter a competing perspective of Israel’s founding — as a refuge for an oppressed people with deep roots in the region — he acknowledged Jewish ties to the land, and said he was not opposed to assigning writing by Zionists,” the Times reported.
“A rigorous study of the creation of Israel,” Rodriguez told the Times, “requires a painful coming to terms with certain historic facts. I would analogize that to learning the history of slavery.”
A teacher, Guadalupe Cardona, defended liberated ethnic studies.
“A majority of my students have never even studied their own history,” Cardona said.
“If someone is going to teach that conflict from a true ethnic studies perspective, it’s going to be critiquing settler colonialism in Palestine,” she said.
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An Israeli soldier takes up position on the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, on Monday, Jan. 29. (AP/Tsafrir Abayov)
Democratic state senator Scott Wiener, a supporter of ethnic studies, pointed to the Israel-Hamas war as an important point of conflict for scholars.
“But,” he added, “picking one foreign conflict to teach intensively about and demonize one side — that is the home of one-half of all Jews on the planet — is very problematic.”
The ADL did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
