The Academic and Social Values of Ethnic Studies

    For this week’s blog post, I will be responding to the “connections” option in the weekly blog assignment list. This week’s reading, “The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies”, and its themes are highly interconnected with both the film “Precious Knowledge” and the reading “The Silenced Dialogue” by Lisa Delpit. This week’s reading heavily focuses on how marginalized groups are often left out of the picture when it comes to curriculum. This lack of representation for marginalized groups creates achievement gaps. However, when ethnic studies are added into school curriculums, students were more interested in what they were learning and performed better in school. 

    This reading connects to “Precious Knowledge” because the film displays how important ethnic studies are in the classroom. In the film, the Tucson school department was getting rid of their ethnic studies program because they were deemed “un-American”. These ethnic studies classes were of high importance, though, to its students because they taught them about both their culture and about real-world issues. With these classes, students were not only learning about problems such as inequity and racism, but they also grew as confident people who were able to stand up for what they believed in. Furthermore, as this week’s reading stated, ethnic studies help increase academic achievement. This was very apparent in the Tuscon district because more students were graduating because they were more engaged in their learning. Not only does this film show the positives of ethnic studies as discussed by this week’s reading, but it also shows the negatives of the lack of ethnic studies. The superintendent in Tucson further marginalized minority students by getting rid of the ethnic studies programs because he showed that their representation was not valued in the school district, which further demonstrates the themes of this week’s reading. Not only did this week’s reading relate to “Precious Knowledge”, but its themes also relate to Delpit’s, “The Silenced Dialogue”. In “The Silenced Dialogue”, Delpit discusses how members of minority groups in society are often thrown into society without any help adapting to its culture, often leaving them to fall behind in their attempt to submit to societal norms. This theme is displayed in this week’s reading because as stated, students in minority groups are often underrepresented in their school curriculums. So, they have to adapt to only seeing those in the majority groups represented, or seeing their minority represented in a false or stereotypical way. 

    After reading this week’s article and connecting it to other sources that we have examined, I have reflected on my own educational experiences and realized that I have had very little exposure to ethnic studies. Even though I have my own culture, I absolutely love learning about other cultures and ethnic groups. In my twelve years of K-12 schooling, I can only count on one hand on how many experiences I’ve had with educational studies, and they were only tied to specific classes. In high school, I took advanced level Spanish classes and it was in these classes where I encountered Hispanic studies. However, it was only in the highest levels where I was able to learn about this, so not everyone had the same experiences that I had. I honestly think that there should be more ethnic studies incorporated into every single classroom curriculum because I feel I became a more well-rounded citizen when learning about other cultures and its people. I feel that I can connect more to my fellow man, and I feel that this was something that was only brought to me through ethnic studies. So, a question I have thought of is how can we as future educators incorporate true (not stereotypical) ethnic studies into our everyday classrooms?