Black history lessons don’t tell full story, activists say. Will schools see changes?
.jpg "People have pushed for changes in the way schools teach Black history.")
As people across the country call for change, some want to see more comprehensive Black history lessons in school curriculums.
Petitions have pushed for revising classes that some say don’t do enough to delve into the roots of discrimination and inequality.
Meanwhile, officials in several school districts have reviewed coursework, news outlets report.
The latest pushes for change follow the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. That officer and three others at the scene were arrested and charged.
Floyd’s death has sparked nationwide protests and calls to address racial disparities, including those in education.
What is currently being taught?
There are no federal rules on how schools should teach Black history, the Associated Press reported, leaving states responsible for setting the guidelines.
In Maryland, student Tiara McDonald recently told the Montgomery County school board the experiences of African Americans shouldn’t be pigeonholed to Black History Month, WTOP reported.
“This month of learning talks about racial injustice like it’s something in the past,” the middle schooler said, according to the TV station. “As we are now aware, racial injustice is current. ... Black history is America’s history.”
Montgomery County is among the districts that say they recently made their curriculum more inclusive and are reviewing other potential adjustments, news outlets report.
Kevin Cokley, a professor at the University of Texas, helped to design an elective African American history course for Texas high schoolers. Many of his college students say they learned “sanitized” accounts of Black history before coming to his class, according to the Associated Press.
Cokley told the AP that many of his students were “shocked and angered” when he taught them the specifics of slavery that weren’t covered in their K-12 courses.
“Really the overarching theme is, ‘Yes, we made mistakes, but we overcame because we are the United States of America,’” LaGarrett King, professor and founding director of the Carter Center for K-12 Black History Education at the University of Missouri, told NBC News. “What that has done is it has erased tons of history that would combat that progressive narrative.”
One example of an under-taught piece of history King mentioned to NBC News was the Tulsa Race Massacre. In 1921, white people destroyed businesses in a prosperous Black neighborhood known as “Black Wall Street”, killing up to 300 people, according to History.com.
In a 2018 report from the organization Teaching Tolerance titled “Teaching Hard History: American Slavery,” a multiple-choice survey of 1,000 high school seniors found only a third correctly answered that the 13th amendment abolished slavery.
In another question, 48% said the Civil War started over taxes.
The report, from the organization Teaching Tolerance, called the results “dismal, even on easy items.”
“Teachers are serious about teaching slavery, but there’s a lack of deep coverage of the subject in the classroom,” the organization wrote. “Popular textbooks fail to provide comprehensive coverage of slavery and enslaved peoples.
“We can and must do better.”
What are people pushing for?
Some people who want to see change have brought their messages to protests, school board meetings or petitions.
More than 65,000 people have signed one online petition that calls on the U.S. Department of Education and other entities to “reform a broken education system.”
“Most of the time when learning about our history, we get watered down versions that barely scratch the surface of the real struggles in our past,” the post on Change.org said. “Because of this, ignorance and bigotry persists; people do not know why people are the way they are and live the lives they live.”
Some pushes for new curriculum are concentrated at the local level, reaching districts from California to Maine, according to the Voice of OC and seacoastonline.com.
In Louisiana, activists are calling for the past experiences of African Americans to be taught in all history classes at Caddo Parish Public Schools. District officials say they teach civil rights and adhere to state education standards, which include Black history lessons at multiple grade levels, KSLA reported.
Change.org petition signers in Wayne, New Jersey, want at least 10% of social studies course material to cover Black history. Bianca García says lessons in the school district roughly 20 miles from New York City focus on “slavery and revolt,” NorthJersey.com reported.
“It’s not hard to see how some kids grow up believing that Black people only cause violence,” she said at a protest this month, according to the news website.
But Superintendent Mark Toback pushed back, saying, “while we recognize there is always room for improvement, we have made great strides with our curriculum in the past five years,” according to NorthJersey.com.
The issue has reached the U.S. House of Representatives as well. In May, U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge introduced the “Black History Is American History Act,” which would provide grants to help promote educational programs covering Black history.
“America’s history is also diminished and diluted when it does not include all our stories,” she wrote in Fortune. “As we honor Juneteenth and the Texans who were the last to learn they were ‘forever free,’ we should take pride in the fact that black History is American history — and work to make sure all states teach it to their students.”
This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 4:39 PM with the headline "Black history lessons don’t tell full story, activists say. Will schools see changes?."
