The Academic Value.
Hello, everyone! In my last post, I discussed how I discovered the meaning of ethnic studies, and what that definition actually meant. When I was doing my research for that post, I started realizing the limited scope of what I learned in my 11th grade US History class. When I try and remember when races such as African Americans and Asian Americans were mentioned, I realized, rather somberly, that those races were not portrayed as much more than victims of discrimination, and that the entire cultural formation of those ethnicities in the United States was completely sidelined.
As a result, I sought to discover the effect of such a limited perspective on students, as well as the value of teaching history through a more diverse perspective as well. I happened to stumble upon a paper titled “The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies,” written by Christine Sleeter, Ph.D., who is a professor at California State University, Monterey Bay.
Professor Sleeter opens up her discussion regarding the impact of multicultural curricula on students by speaking about a student named Carlos. Carlos had graduated from a local high school, but found education boring and entered the military instead. After completing a tour of duty, Carlos heard about Chicano studies from a friend, and tried classes on the subject himself. Contrary to his lack of enthusiasm in high school, Carlos took as many Chicano studies courses as possible, eventually receiving his BA degree in Spanish. He entered the graduate program of Education that Professor Sleeter was heading, and has been teaching ever since. This story is immensely powerful, because it demonstrates the profound effect a truly multicultural education can have on students of color who merely wish to study their own culture.
Sleeter then references many systematic analyses which show that “while content related to African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans were added, deeper patterns and narratives that reflect Euro-American experiences and worldviews,…remain intact.” She explains how Whites continue to appear in “the widest variety of roles, dominating storylines, and lists of accomplishments.” Ultimately, African Americans appear mainly in relation to slavery, and Asian Americans and Latinos appear as “figures on the landscape,” without much in-depth information about their culture and development in the United States.
Professor Sleeter also studied the History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools and found that the “deeper narrative of the framework fit comfortably within a story of European immigrants and the progress of those immigrants’,” a story that explores purely the Euro-American perspective as opposed to the varied perspectives of people of color as well.
Sleeter mentioned that students have been found to respond to school curricula partly based on what they learn and observe at home. She references a study done by Terrie Epstein in 2001, where Epstein explains that teachers are often unaware that students of color come into school with “different and/or more critical views on history and society than those of their students and texts,” to devastating results. While white students found history teachers and textbooks to be the most reliable secondary sources, students of color cited their family members and/or people of their community to be more reliable. The white eleventh graders interviewed thought that the teachers had given them a multicultural education because people of many different races were mentioned, while students of color thought the teacher merely taught “White people’s history.” Ultimately, students of color began to distrust their teachers and textbooks more, becoming more critical of the United States and of democracy.
To wrap up this post, I’d like to describe Sleeter’s thoughts on what ethnic studies scholarship is. She explains that it provides a “different narrative that is shaped partially by histories of oppression in the U.S. as well as by the intellectual and cultural resources and traditions” of racial minorities. This scholarship brings institutionalized racism to the forefront of the discussion for students, allowing “multiple voices to enter dialog constructing the narrative of this country,” which is essential to the development of a “democracy that includes everyone.”
Thanks for reading, everyone! I hope you learned something new. I’ll be linking all my sources below, so feel free to take a look at them.
