Students in our program should understand how historical and contemporary approaches to curriculum and instruction impacts students, teachers, and communities differently.
When looking at the curriculum of the United States, it is important to note that history is often written by the victors. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) that Texas teachers and students follow are filled with the stories of white males who were victorious rather than the suffering of those that they arose on top of. This is an important understanding for teachers, especially for those of minorities, since they need to realize the curriculum taught is skewed in the way of a favored outcome. To teach students and create a more just world, we must start with analyzing the story and issues behind the curriculum.
In the curriculum and instruction program, my first real dose of recognizing the inequality came from analyzing the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) in EDCI 5320. Throughout the course, I learned a lot about the inequalities stacked within the required skills, especially in social studies with the under-representation of females and minorities, but even in the math curriculum in the elementary grades (Texas Education Agency, 2018). Finding that there are forms of discrimination threaded through a curriculum about numbers was when I lost the most faith in the leaders of the Texas Education Agency. Most of these inequalities are embedded within the Personal Financial Literacy strand through the order of which skills are taught, such as how teachers are expected to preach charitable giving for 4 more years than they teach students how to balance a budget which allows them to “build up a financial safety net and hence may serve as an insurance mechanism” ((Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, 2017; Supanantaroek, 2016, pg. 512). If a Texas student qualifies for free or reduced lunch on a household income of less than $34,060, then why is Texas not pushing an agenda of making ends meet before charity and savings (Food and Nutrition Division, 2020)? Better yet, how do we expect our low-income students to feel when we tell them for 4 years to give before we tell them to protect themselves and their families by making a smart financial budget? The worst part is that most of our low-income students are of minority ethnicity.
The second time I lost faith in the education system, was after watching the documentary The Revisionaries, when I learned that the chairman of the State Board of Education (SBOE) from 2007 until 2009 was a dentist with no background in education except teaching Sunday school (Thurman, 2013). Don McLeroy was responsible for keeping creationism policies in the science curriculum while continuing to claim that his Evangelical faith was not impacting his decisions for Texas curriculum. From then on, I have never looked at the TEKS the same way again. James Baldwin summed up my feelings on the TEKS in his A Talk to Teachers essay.
“this was not a Christian nation. It didn’t matter what you said or how often you went to church. My father and my mother and my grandfather and my grandmother knew that Christians didn’t act this way...the American white man... has long since lost his grip on reality. In some peculiar way, having created this myth about Negroes, and the myth about his own history, he created myths about the world” – James Baldwin
Knowing that these words were spoken in 1963, and still hold truth with modern curriculum, means something must change and as graduates of this program, we need to start making those changes. Before we can take steps to do that and become coconspirators, we need to understand where the stereotypes and racist policies have come from and advanced through the curriculum until today.
The 13 colonies of the United States were founded by white males. Those white males became presidents, lawyers, and the elites of the country. It was not until the 15th amendment, adopted in 1869, that males of other skin color and ethnic backgrounds could vote in United States Elections. This still means that the male population were the victors who controlled what important events were written down and the point of view from which they were recorded. For curriculum in public education, this means most of the points of view taught are from the male perspective. In fact, there are only about 30 women taught in all of K-12 social studies TEKS, in comparison to the almost 300 names that are required to be taught (Texas Education Agency, 2018). Women are only represented in 10% of the curriculum yet make up half the total population at any given time. These images of women in history does not inspire young girls to be successful.
The other major issue with United States education, besides underrepresentation of women and minorities, is their assimilation goals for minority students. Starting in 1819 with the Civilization Fund Act, the U.S. government ripped thousands of native American children from their parents and tribes, forcing them to attend boarding schools (Pember, 2019). At these schools, typically run by nuns, they were stripped of their identity and given English names with European haircuts and forced to only speak English. The goal was to “eradicate the Indian and save the man” through the Carlisle assimilation boarding schools or adopting native children out to white families in order to save and protect them from their heritage (Vox, 2019). The worst part of these policies is that they were continued until the 1960’s and the oppressive policies have been extended into the schools system. These policies have been linked to schools shootings where students tired of hearing the oppression of their people lash out in ways that harm their peers (Grande, 2007).
During the same time that Native American Assimilation took place, so did the oppression of African American Populations. From slavery to circumstantial freedoms, to the racist oppressions they face today, the African American population has not caught a break. After being released from slavery, and granted the right to vote, countless laws were still created to continue to oppress African Americans. While every child who has gone through Texas public schools knows about Jim Crow Laws of segregation, what is not taught is the ways of oppression that have made modern equality almost impossible, such as redlining (TEKS, 2017). The Fair Housing Act allowed for rapid expansion of neighborhoods and homes but allowed for subdivisions to hold a clause that no home shall be sold to those of color, nor resold to them in the future (California Newsreel, 2010). Since equity is only gained by owning property, many of color could only rent because of these clauses, leaving no equity for themselves or their offspring. Because schools are zoned by neighborhoods, the act of redlining also segregated schools as a result (Jones, 2015).
These results spiraled into the uproar about the closing of certain Chicago Public Schools just a few years ago. The main characteristics of these “failing” schools is that they were attended by majority African American populations, which likely had multiple generations of families attend the same school, and they had “low test scores” by at most 5 points per subject (Ewing, 2018). Some of the biggest issues of concern from parents and community members from the closing schools was that they not only were a place of generational safety, but some students would have to walk through gang territory to get to their new school, they would not know the teachers or administration they had trusted for years, and of course, the racial attack parents felt that the lower income schools were closed while none of the affluent Chicago Public Schools were considered. “The issue actually is not even the school; it’s a history that goes undiscussed, a history that provokes justifiable anger and mistrust” (Ewing, 2018, p.13).
While there are other races that are marginalized and portrayed in ways that create stereotypes, such as Asians being considered the model minorities because the curriculum depicts them as hard working and furthering United States pride, many minorities are not that lucky to be depicted so positively (Au, 2016). Instead of showing the dark side of policies, such are redlining and explaining to an African American child that you are likely impoverished and at a low-income school because your grandparents were unable to purchase a house nor voice their opinions without fearing for their lives, the curriculum cuts those dark portrayals out (Ewing, 2018; Jones, 2015). Immigrants and refugees are left feeling that they are not desired with constant fear of being deported, despite the United States being built form Immigration (Au, 2016). Those of Hispanic decent are often discriminated against for their bilingual abilities and the fear of them taking jobs from hard working Americans when they themselves are also citizens.
Students are sheltered from the truth of their past. Teachers are forced to teach half-truths, both fearing to deviate from the TEKS while attempting to fill the gaps with extra stories and figures that represent those in their classroom. Communities continue to be outraged, either because their past is being forgotten and ignored or because they do not want the truth to be uncovered. This is why it is my job, our job, as ones educated in the faults of the curriculum, to start to make changes in our rooms that empower our students towards success, while finding ways to create Equitable Educational Change.