Saturday, June 25, 2005

Re: Philadelphia Mandates Black History for Graduation. Philadelphia will be the first major city to require African-American history for high school graduation. By MICHAEL JANOFSKY. [NYT > National] Way to go, Philadelphia. Lead the nation in something that should have been done long ago. The city of brotherly love has taken a step toward furthering understanding and unity between American cultural & ethnic groups by becoming the first major city to mandate the study of history through the lense of the African-American experience. It's about time. And shame of the rest of us for not doing this decades ago. Shame on my home state of California, which carries the reputation of being a progressive leader of the nation. Shame on Atlanta, my current home and like Philly, a majority black town, and Atlanta City Schools, my current employer for not taking this action long ago. (The best we did here in the ATL was to mandate a staff development course on "African & African-American Infusion" into the curriculum about seven years ago. That basically left it up to the discretion of teachers to choose the content and presentation of African-American history and culture in their classes and courses, or whether to do it at all. And it provided a very limited amount of training. A far cry from a course dedicated to the African-American experience.) Sadly, of course, there is dissent in Philly over this new mandate, including from the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Reps. The dissenters' mantra is that this will cause "division" rather than "unity." I say nonsense. You're telling me that teaching our nation's history almost entirely and exclusively from ONE cultural perspective has not in fact exacerbated the divisions that already exist? Now at last there will be a second cultural perspective represented in the high school social studies curriculum. If anything, this mandate will foster the end of divisions. Is that not what cross-cultural undertanding and appreciation do? I would bet that you would be hard pressed to find white high school students in Philadelphia who would not be willing to take this African-American history course.(Although a couple were apparently found and quoted in this article as saying they were not interested in studying anything other than their own history--all the more evidence for the need of such a course.) I am certain that the teaching of this African-American histoory course will do much more to increase appreciation and undertanding than to cause greater divisions. Much as when I make a point to include the cultures and histories of all my students (Mexican, Haitian, Vietnamese, Ethiopian...) in my English to Speakers of Other Languages courses, it increases their appreciation of each other, fosters new friendships between individuals of different cultures, and empowers and enhances the self-esteem of my students, which leads to improved performance in school. So let Philadelphia's action in this case be a beacon for the rest of the nation to follow suit. And furthermore, I say let this be merely a start. May it soon be followed by movements to teach history from ALL the range of perspectives represented in American history and culture. Why should cultural studies courses in the experience of Mexican-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, be reserved exclusively for the college level? 12:19:38 PM    comment []