The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) held a public meeting in which an agenda item (1-H) concerns teacher credentialing. Alarmingly, this proposal seeks to give college graduates with an Ethnic Studies major credentials to teach 7-12 grade Social Studies and History (Appendix B (b) (9)).
Allowing unqualified candidates who are trained to indoctrinate rather than educate to teach in K-12 classrooms will surely compromise and erode the quality of public education further.Since late 2020, CFER (Californians for Equal Rights) has raised public awareness and conducted multiple research projects on various problems with California's Ethnic Studies paradigm. In short, the current model to teach Ethnic Studies is hijacked by a race-based, oppressor-v.-victim model. Last year, California became the first state in the U.S. to mandate ethnic studies for all its public high schools, with the passage of AB101. The state-endorsed model framework, approved by the State Board of Education on March 18, 2022 in spite of over 7,000 opposing public comments, was laden with ideological jargon such as “four ‘I’s of oppression,” “critical consciousness,” “intersectionality,” “double helix,” and “radical healing.”
The finalized framework was so problematic that CFER sued the state contesting the constitutionality of two particular affirmations that chant repetitively to Aztec, Mayan and African deities. In higher education, the teaching of Ethnic Studies is thoroughly politicized.
CTC's proposal means Ethnic Studies majors are ill equipped to teach History and Social Studies. Their coursework, focused on the study of ethnicities through the controversial lenses of oppression, resistance and anti-racism, cannot generate subject matter competencies for such foundational courses.
Our friends at the Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies (ACES) first blew the whistle on this dangerous development. We must act now to defend academic standards.
World History textbooks in higher education are already fraught with historical anomalies. Here are some historical mistakes already in college textbooks.
Lowering academic standards, as has happened already in most colleges, is problematic for impressionable youth. It has led to all kinds of egregious historical mistakes. An African civilization, with no impact on the world, is celebrated as a major accomplishment, whereas, the Dutch, a relatively minor European nation, is overlooked whereas in fact it had a major world impact in finance and trading during the Age of Adventure. Many students believe Cleopatra to be a paragon of African beauty and leadership, whereas the reality is that she was Macedonian Greek.
An African example should not be emphasized to downplay the Dutch in World History. Great Zimbabwe is a medieval city in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe. It is thought to have been the capital of a great kingdom during the country's Late Iron Age about which little is known. During the Eighty Years' War, the Dutch provinces became the most important trading centre of Northern Europe, replacing Flanders in this respect. At the time there was a great flowering of trade, industry, the arts and the sciences in the Netherlands: in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch were arguably the most economically wealthy and scientifically advanced of all European nations. This new, officially Calvinist nation flourished culturally and economically, creating what historian Simon Schama has called an "embarrassment of riches". Speculation in the tulip tradeled to a first stock market crash in 1637, but the economic crisis was soon overcome. Due to these developments the 17th century has been dubbed the Golden Age of the Netherlands.
Similarly, Cleopatra, although nominally African, is actually Greek European. Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ, "Cleopatra the father-beloved" 69 BC – 10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great.
The move to sociologize history has been happening for a long time; I wouldn't even stoop to call history social science though this decline occurred when I was a young student. History is done from the ground up, knowing the primary sources, language, culture, context, and background. Ethnic studies is top down ideology imposed on the past due to current political feelings. That is not how you do history.
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