In 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation requiring all California high school students to complete Ethnic Studies by the 2025–2026 school year. This divisive new course is riddled with social justice nonsense and plagued with controversy and criticism from both the Left and Right. That implementation deadline is quickly approaching. However, my former district in Salinas, California, started requiring the class ahead of schedule.
My Introduction to Ethnic Studies
It started in the 2021–2022 school year—the year of prolonged school closures across the nation. I was dutifully teaching my high school students online, trying to get them to show their faces on camera. Students were expected to take a full load of classes through a screen, while teachers were expected to become online instruction experts overnight. We were all struggling, to say the least, and we are still grappling with the consequences of the learning loss from that year. According to Harvard University (CEPR) and Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project studies, the average 3rd- through 8th-grade student in U.S. public schools “lost the equivalent of a half year of learning in math and a quarter of a year in reading.”
That same year, all my 9th-grade students were introduced to Ethnic Studies, a brand new class that had suddenly become a graduation requirement. Their yearlong health class was cut in half to make room for this course, leaving many educators and parents questioning priorities. Our students’ standardized test scores and literacy rates were already low, so why were we diverting classroom time for this?
As an ESL (English as a second language) teacher, I closely monitored my students’ academic performance across all subjects. I noticed that many male students struggled with the new Ethnic Studies course. When I asked them about their challenges, they responded with comments like “Mrs. Fontanilla, that class is so stupid” and “I don’t even get why we have to take the class—it’s so weird.” Determined to help them succeed, I examined the curriculum in detail.
What I found were lessons focused on concepts such as white privilege, hegemony, graffiti as a form of “resistance,” Black Lives Matter, intersectionality, and various other social justice movements and terminology. (For a more comprehensive analysis, see an article that I wrote about critical race theory.) At its core, Ethnic Studies is a course about supposed oppression—the oppression of various ethnicities, races, and groups, with one glaring exception: the straight, white male. In this framework, straight, white males are portrayed as the dominant class responsible for perpetuating systemic inequality. Looking over this curriculum, I was left wondering why such highly controversial and political topics were taking my students’ time away from more essential academic subjects.
Controversies
The state’s model Ethnic Studies curriculum is nearly 700 pages long, making it a complex and overwhelming document to navigate. Unsurprisingly, it has garnered both support and criticism, leading to many revisions and a yearlong approval process. Some groups have voiced frustration over the exclusion of their community’s experiences of oppression. In its attempt to address the world’s perceived injustices in a single course, the curriculum has even prompted complaints from social justice leaders who argue that the revisions don’t go far enough. Neither side is happy.
In the latest revision of the curriculum, terms like “capitalism” and “revolution” were removed in several sections, and much of the substantive content about the pro-Palestine movement was stripped out. Supporters of the original curriculum have criticized these changes, claiming that it has been gutted of its “anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and liberatory tenets.” However, even with the removal of overtly leftist elements like anti-capitalist rhetoric and calls for student-led revolution, the curriculum remains a source of contention.
Then there are the charges of anti-Semitism. As the 2025 implementation deadline approaches, the Ethnic Studies curriculum continues to face accusations of anti-Semitism, among other issues. In December 2024, Jewish parents filed a lawsuit against the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), alleging that the union-endorsed curriculum includes anti-Semitic content. UTLA has previously come under fire for its anti-Israel stance, including its support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has also filed a lawsuit against the Santa Ana Unified School District, accusing it of implementing an Ethnic Studies curriculum containing anti-Semitic content and violating the Brown Act by approving it without allowing public scrutiny. The ADL argues that the curriculum perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Jewish people and spreads misinformation about Israel. Needless to say, the Ethnic Studies curriculum is highly controversial.
Furthermore, even if it is revised to address these concerns, what happens in the classroom ultimately depends on the teachers themselves. Many of the educators drawn to teaching Ethnic Studies courses are inclined to frame lessons in ways that promote leftist activism. These are often the same teachers who display rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter posters in their classrooms. Behind closed doors, with a captive audience, these lessons may spark discussions that lead students toward the very conclusions the revisions aim to prevent. You can tone down the radical leftism in the curriculum, but if radical leftists still teach it, will anything actually change?
A Waste of Time
Even assuming the miraculous task of pleasing all sides is accomplished in the revision efforts, the question still remains: Why are teachers wasting classroom time on this? As of 2023, only 46.7 percent of California high school students have achieved grade-level proficiency in reading and writing, meaning that more than half are struggling with literacy.
Instead of mandating a divisive and controversial Ethnic Studies course, perhaps schools should prioritize remedial reading programs. If the Left truly values equity and closing the achievement gap as they claim, they should focus less on ensuring students are versed in social justice movements and more on ensuring they have the literacy skills necessary to even comprehend those movements in the first place. But of course, that would mean actually caring about outcomes for students in the real world more than virtue signaling.
