Earlier this month, Townhall covered how documents showed that a California school district spent tens of thousands of dollars to create a “woke” curriculum that would focus on systems of oppression, colonialism and student activism. The curriculum would then be trained to teachers and required for high school students in the foreseeable future.
Documents obtained by parental rights organization Parents Defending Education and shared with Townhall show that a California high school’s “ethnic studies” curriculum focuses on combating “eurocentric framework” in education. In addition, the curriculum focuses on “center[ing] indigeneity, Blackness, race, ethnicity and its intersections to other social categories such as gender and class.”
The Sequoia Union High School District’s curriculum is “an academic field with existing methodologies to question dominant narratives, systems, and their creation and reestablish new ones,” according to the documents obtained by PDE (via Parents Defending Education):
The curriculum framers also suggested that the course include “restorative justice circles” and “weekly socio-emotional check-ins” to combat concerns about students feeling unsafe or ostracized.
The curriculum approval form provides more details on the focuses of the class. The curriculum identifies that two of its core goals are to “Critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society; challenge imperialist/hegemonic beliefs and practices on the ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized levels.” The proposal also intends for students to learn “how race and gender are socially constructed, and how colonial powers leveraged these constructed categories to justify colonization and patriarchal systems.”
Lessons in the curriculum explore how “Privilege + Power = Racism” and “Dominant Narrative and Counternarrative: Heteronormativity and patriarchy.” The curriculum’s second unit includes lessons on the “4 I’s of Oppression (Ideological, Internalized, Interpersonal, and Institutionalized Oppression” and gives examples like “heterosexism,” “capitalism,” and “assimilation and acculturation.”
In addition, the curriculum promotes student activism by requiring students to propose an action plan to address a local issue in their community. They will present the project to an “authentic audience” of teachers, administrators, and members of the school board. Beginning in 2025, the curriculum will be required in the district.
“Under a course masquerading as ‘ethnic studies,’ this school district is using this material to indoctrinate the next generation of Americans. They are using taxpayer resources to push hatred and division. Considering students in California are still working to recover from two years of state-mandated school closures, it is embarrassing that this school is wasting precious class time on politically charged content instead of helping students regain academic fundamentals,” Michele Exner, senior advisor at PDE, told Townhall.
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As Townhall covered, the Jefferson Union High School District in San Mateo County, California, proposed “Ethnic Studies” curriculum that would focus on stories, experiences, and knowledge of people of color, challenge and dismantle racism and intersectional systems of oppression, and cultivate communities that are committed to wellness, liberation, and solidarity.”
“It should come as no surprise that American students are rallying in support of terrorists when our public schools teach ethnic studies lessons like this one from Jefferson Union High School,” Alex Nester, investigative fellow at Parents Defending Education, told Townhall. “Just 13 percent of American students have a functional grasp on history. Schools like Jefferson Union that spend time teaching divisive race ideology instead of actual history are a huge part of the problem.”
