On Wednesday, April 7, the California House Education Committee (Assembly Education Committee) voted to pass Proposition AB101. The proposal aims to make a radical course mandatory for all California high school students to graduate. Many people who called to voice their opposition were barred from speaking by the committee chair that day.
The radical course being pursued in AB101 is the nation’s first controversial Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) (Revision 4), which was adopted by the California Department of Education on March 18.
Many California scholars, various educational groups, and parents have studied the curriculum and found that it has nothing to do with the historical origins, culture, or customs of ethnic groups, but rather is a radical curriculum “based on critical racial, Marxist” thinking.
The syllabus was found to contain controversial critical race theory, a culture of hate, and teaching students about self-classification, as well as radical sex education, transgenderism, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and LGBTQ content.
Dr. Wu Wenyuan, executive director of the California Coalition for Equal Rights (CFER) and one of the leaders in opposing Referendum 16 (Prop 16), clearly opposed making ESMC courses mandatory for high school students during the expert speaker session of the State House Education Committee.
She argued that the ESMC curriculum was already seriously controversial and divisive, but that it was reckless for the taxpayer-funded state government to still push forward and sponsor this radical political movement. “The last version of the Ethnic Studies Curriculum framework is still based on critical ethnic studies theory and critical pedagogy. It is the most corrupt pedagogy of all, a system of thought imposed on our students and faculty that divides people by color or race, which is simply wrong.”
She argues, “Teaching the so-called Ethnic Studies Curriculum on the premise of racial division, the dichotomy of ‘victim’ versus ‘oppressor,’ also fundamentally violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the California Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment, and anti-discrimination laws at the federal and state levels.”
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder and director of the AMCHA Initiative, an anti-Semitism watchdog group and another expert opposed to the ESMC curriculum, said, “Despite four revisions, the approved Ethnic Studies Curriculum has been amended four times. The approved Ethnic Studies curriculum, despite four revisions, is still critical ethnic studies, a narrowly conceptualized field driven by political and activist activism. As an organization that investigates anti-Semitism on campus, we have witnessed how a curriculum based on critical ethnic studies can incite hatred and division among all students.”
Roseman-Benjamin also noted that more than 150 distinguished university scholars, including Nobel laureates, have recently determined that claims about the academic and social benefits of ESMC courses are empirically false.
Opposing voices banned
The ESMC curriculum movement in California has been underway for nearly five years, with four versions of the syllabus released before and after. Wu Wenyuan said the most radical first version included words related to Marxism, anti-capitalism, and radicalism, as well as content celebrating the vanguard of violent revolution and ethnic cleansing (Racial Purity); it also strongly promoted typical communists, neo-Marxists, and Black Panther Party members. Civil society has found that groups are currently promoting the first version of the curriculum in various California school districts.
When the California Department of Education adopted the ESMC curriculum last month, citing the “importance of teaching about discrimination and oppression,” it claimed that it wanted to use the curriculum as a model for further replication in other states across the country. More than 100 people spoke at the meeting that day, most of them in opposition.
At the April 7 meeting of the House Education Committee, many people called the committee during the “public address” period to express their opinions. The number of people who opposed making ESMC a required high school course was twice as large as the number of people who supported it. Halfway through the “public speaking” period, the committee’s Democratic chairman, Patrick O’Donnell, suspended the session, citing time, when there were still 40 people waiting to speak on the line.
Many of the people waiting online were CFER supporters, parents and academics, most of whom wanted to voice their opposition to the program, but the committee chairman forced the suspension and prevented them from speaking again,” Wu said. But even then, we had more comments against than for, and most of the supporters were vested interest groups like unions.”
When O’Donnell ordered the suspension of public statements, committee Vice Chairman Kevin Kiley, a Republican, proposed that committee members hear the public comments, only to have O’Donnell cut off the microphone.
Karen England, executive director of the “Congressional Resource Institute” (CRI), also waited online for nearly two hours that day, hoping to express her opposition to the ESMC curriculum, but ultimately did not have the opportunity to speak and felt that the public’s right to speak was violated.
CRI believes that the critical ESMC curriculum violates students’ constitutional right to privacy and instead greatly increases the likelihood that students will be harassed or bullied by other students.
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