Associate Editor Pia Lopez wrote an interesting essay, “Can
we find common ground on schools?” on the ideas of Diane Ravitch in the Bee this morning- except
for one paragraph where Lopez is substantially wrong. She says,
“ In the 1980’s she (Ravitch) helped write a history curriculum
framework for California that still today is considered among the best in the
country.”
Lets see. She
must mean the California History Social Science Framework of 1987 – still in
use today- that almost completely ignores Mexican American History.
From my essay , “Why California Students Do not know
Chicano/ Mexican American History. “
The 1987 Framework still
in use today expanded African American, Native American, and women’s
history coverage but remains totally inadequate in the coverage of Latinos and
Asians. The only significant change between the 1985 and the 2005 adopted
Framework was the addition of a new cover, a cover letter, and additions of
photos such as of Cesar Chavez . Latinos currently make up 48.1 percent of
California’s student population and Asians make up 8.1 %.
The dominant neo
conservative view of history argues that textbooks and a common
history should provide the glue that unites our society.(Ravitch's view at the time) Historical themes and
interpretations are selected in books to create unity in a diverse and divided
society, a unity from the point of view of the dominant class. This
viewpoint assigns to schools the task of creating a common culture. In reality,
television and military service may do more to create a common culture than do
schools and books.
Conservatives assign the task of cultural assimilation to schools, with
particular emphasis on the history, social science, and literature curricula.
Historians advocating consensus write textbooks that downplay the roles of
slavery, class, racism, genocide, and imperialism in our history. They focus on
ethnicity and assimilation rather than race, on the success of achieving
political reform, representative government, and economic opportunity for
European American workers and immigrants. They decline to notice the high
poverty rate of U.S. children, the crisis of urban schooling, and the
continuation of racial divisions in housing and the labor force. In California
they decline to notice that Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and Latinos as well as
Asians contributed to the development of this society.
At
present California students are about 48% descendents of Mexican and other
Latino cultures yet they are not in the textbooks as a consequence of the
Ravitch History/Social Science Framework.
That
is not “still considered among the best in the country,” except perhaps by
persons who know little about the issue,
or care little about Mexican American students, their history and their success in
schools.
See
more on the Institute for Democracy and Education web site
Duane Campbell,
Professor Emeritus, Bilingual Multicultural Education.
Author, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural
education. 2010.
