In defense of critical ethnic studies that is coming to all K-12 public classrooms, Minnesota Democratic legislators posit it as simply an opportunity to ensure students are taught about racial/ethnic cultures, communities, and histories. Indeed, the chief sponsor of the ethnic studies legislation has even characterized it as “a curriculum that reflects all students.”
But a full read of the definition of ethnic studies in Minnesota law reveals it for the ideological discipline it is.
Ethnic studies means the interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity with a focus on the experiences and perspectives of people of color within and beyond the United States. Ethnic studies analyzes the ways in which race and racism have been and continue to be social, cultural, and political forces, and the connection of race to the stratification of other groups, including stratification based on the protected classes under section 363A.13.
Further, the Minnesota Department of Education’s Ethnic Studies Working Group explicitly states in its draft framework* that “Ethnic Studies is not multicultural education.”
Minnesota teacher licensure requires a multicultural education component, intended to increase intercultural competency among Minnesota’s teachers to teach the full cultural diversity of Minnesota’s students — but multicultural education content is not the same as Ethnic Studies [emphasis added].
Rather, according to the draft framework, “Ethnic Studies center a power analysis of race, racialization and racial formation including how racial categorization impacts human relationships to land, access to property rights, how these produce marginalization, discrimination and oppression and constructs identity.”
The draft framework includes self-assessments that prompt students to ask: “How does Ethnic Studies instruction and support help me understand white supremacy as a structural condition? How do I recognize the ways white supremacy shows up in my everyday life (e.g., at home, school, community)? How does Ethnic Studies instruction give me the tools to challenge white supremacy and its intersection with other forms of oppression?”
Teachers are instructed to “continuously reflect on my identities…and my relationship to structure and power in order to teach Ethnic Studies.” Questions to students include: “What is power?”; How do “institutions, like schools, oppress groups based on race?”; and “How do we redistribute power to create equitable…ecosystems?”
So remember, no matter how many times Democratic legislators claim ethnic studies in Minnesota is “just” learning about the histories, cultures, and contributions of diverse groups, the individuals and their political advocacy organizations entrenching identitarian ideology into our schools have told us, it’s not.
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*The Minnesota Department of Education has indicated to American Experiment that it doesn’t intend to adopt the draft framework in its current form, but it provided no information about modifications or a timeline.