An effort to reflect the experiences of California’s minority communities in its educational curriculum has faced criticism from a range of groups over concerns about whose stories are being told.
How and where do Jews fit into America’s minority communities?
That’s the question at the center of a debate that has raged for more than a year over new school curriculum guides that are being adopted in California. Lawmakers there required the creation of an ethnic studies curriculum, and the effort to fulfill their mandate has spurred a yearslong process that has included multiple opportunities for public comment.
Jewish groups strenuously objected to the first draft of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, or ESMC, saying it did not reflect the American Jewish experience and even advanced some forms of anti-Semitism.
Many of those same groups praised the third draft of the curriculum when it was released in December. The revision responded to their concerns, they say: Two sections of the curriculum deal principally with the American Jewish experience, and many of the sections that they had identified as objectionable were gone.
Not everyone is happy with the latest draft: On Wednesday, the authors of the original curriculum disavowed the project in protest of the revised versions, which they feel “silenced the voices of Ethnic Studies teachers/educators, who are all from racially and politically underrepresented groups.”
And other Jewish activists say that regardless of how the project discusses Jews, its basic ideology is unacceptable. They see this as the latest front in an ongoing battle over critical race theory, an approach to education that views race and racism as embedded in, and central to, society and its institutions. Opponents of critical race theory see it as a threat to open debate and a return to classifying people based on their race, which they see as a danger to Jews.
In recent days, two long articles have been published in Jewish publications—both objecting to the revised version from those two opposing sides of the debate. Whatever the final draft looks like, California law does not require schools to use the proposed materials it is making available.
Here’s what you need to know about California’s ethnic studies curriculum and why it has roiled Jews in the state.
An attempt to reflect California’s diversity in its school curriculum
The goal of California’s ethnic studies curriculum is to increase understanding of the state’s ethnic minorities and have them feel more included in the state school system. After state lawmakers required an ethnic studies curriculum, a panel of 20 ethnic studies scholars convened and drafted a version focused on four minority groups: African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans. The curriculum discusses the experiences and contributions of those minorities in the state, as well as the growth of their communities and the ongoing discrimination they face.
But when the first draft of the curriculum was released in the middle of 2019, numbering hundreds of pages, Jewish organizations in the state and across the political spectrum were upset that it did not include the experience of California’s Jews. The state has more than 1 million Jews, with Los Angeles and the Bay Area hosting two of the nation’s largest Jewish communities.
In one example JIMENA, an organization representing the state’s Mizrahi, or Middle Eastern Jewish, community was dissatisfied with the draft. The Mizrahi Jewish activists felt that their experience, which includes fleeing their home countries, was excluded from the curriculum, even though the experience of Arab Americans, whose communities hail from some of the same countries, were featured.
Jewish groups were upset, too, that the curriculum included a number of anti-Israel sections. It counted the movement to boycott Israel among social movements to discuss positively alongside Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, among others. Critics complained that the inclusion of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement effectively discriminated against Jews and was an outlier among movements that otherwise focused on domestic issues.
The initial draft also referred to Israel’s War of Independence as the Nakba, the Palestinian term for the conflict and meaning “catastrophe.” The curriculum also included a song lyric that appeared to accuse the Jews of manipulating the press, a long-standing anti-Semitic stereotype.
“The ESMC is inaccurate and misleading in several critical respects and is drafted in a manner that reflects an anti-Jewish bias,” read a July 2019 letter from a coalition of California Jewish state lawmakers. “We cannot support a curriculum that erases the American Jewish experience, fails to discuss antisemitism, reinforces negative stereotypes about Jews, singles out Israel for criticism, and would institutionalize the teaching of antisemitic stereotypes in our public schools.”
Jewish organizations were not the only ones to object to exclusions in the first draft. Advocates for Sikh-American and Armenian-American interests also called for their communities to be included. A letter signed by a coalition of organizations representing Middle Eastern immigrant communities, spearheaded by JIMENA, protested what they saw as a lack of representation in the curriculum.
“We fear that our exclusion from a curriculum, which we support, would contribute to the ongoing cultural genocide and erasure of minority voices from the Middle East and North Africa,” read the letter, which also was signed by representatives of the Assyrian, Coptic, Kurdish, Iranian, Baha’i and Zoroastrian communities. “Our inclusion in the curriculum would affirm the important and compelling minority voices from the MENA region.”
A revised version reflects Jewish groups’ concerns
Following the backlash to the first draft, the state’s Education Department said it recognized changes were needed. Ahead of the release of the latest draft, according to the department, members of the public sent in 57,000 comments on the curriculum.
“A model curriculum should be accurate, free of bias, appropriate for all learners in our diverse state, and align with Governor Newsom’s vision of a California for all,” read a statement made in August 2019 by the leadership of the state Board of Education. “The current draft model curriculum falls short and needs to be substantially redesigned.”
The following year, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have made ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement, citing the controversies over the draft as a reason.
A number of Jewish groups campaigned for the inclusion of the Jewish experience in later drafts. The latest curriculum does include two lessons on American Jews, including one on the Mizrahi experience. JIMENA drafted the lesson plan on Mizrahi Jews last year.
Another lesson plan focuses on the complex nature of American Jewish identity, including the ways in which some Jews experience “conditional whiteness and privilege.” Both lesson plans discuss anti-Semitism—includes definitions of anti-Semitism from the Anti-Defamation League as well as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
The sections echoing anti-Jewish stereotypes and discussing the movement to boycott Israel have been removed. So have references to the Nakba. The latest draft also includes lessons on other communities, including Sikhs and Armenians, who had protested their earlier exclusion.
Jewish groups that had campaigned for the changes said they were pleased with the latest draft.
“We are encouraged by the IQC’s support this week for including the Jewish American experience as a part of the new ethnic studies model curriculum for all the state’s public schools,” Tyler Gregory, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Community Relations Council, said in a statement ahead of the release of the latest draft, referring to the committee that put together the curriculum.
“The IQC has endorsed holistic and equitable changes to the curriculum that protect our community and other communities through the inclusion of language that seeks to prevent discrimination against any group in the classroom.”
Ben Sales is a contributing writer to JTA and Jlife Magazine.
