Culture wars have reached our quiet little village. Does it matter? Yes, it does.
At this point, the battling is contained to a few meetings with some belligerent confrontations and a bunch of letters and commentaries published in the local paper. Some of those have included more than a tad of hostility. But no dueling yard signs yet. Maybe a truce will be agreed before things go farther. Hope abides.
It started a few months ago when the local school district proposed a new elective course for high school students. An ethnic studies course would be offered to juniors and seniors. With some well-thought and passionate input from students describing individual stories of damaging prejudice and ignorance, a curriculum has been developed.
There's always opposition to change. And, I get it -- change can be scary and it can be threatening. That's why a lot of change gets done gradually. Ethnic studies is one of those things that has been gradually changing and improving. Compare a current American history textbook for high school use today with what was common decades ago (yes, I know, the memories are perhaps few and somewhat dim) to understand the vast improvements in the telling of non-majority stories in U.S. history.
Nonetheless, reporting of opposition presentations in school board meetings, as well as the writings published in our local weekly, indicated growing heat in the matter. As a community member without a vested interest in a high school course -- no such students in this household -- my feelings about the matter (and/or my vanity?) convinced me that I could help reduce temperatures by contributing my thoughts to the public discussion. So I offered those ideas in writing to our local weekly newspaper. Here is what was published:
Having read numerous articles and letters about the proposed ethnic
studies elective course at (local community) High School, I want to say that
I hope it is implemented. I am confident that students will enjoy it
and gain from it. I say this as an "outside observer" because I am
neither a parent of a student, nor am I a professional educator. Even
so, I hope the reader will stick with me for a few minutes because I
have a story to tell.
I was young, college-educated, employed in a demanding professional
career, recently-married and an avid student of American history when --
much to my surprise -- I discovered that the name "Manzanar" meant
nothing to me. I had inquired of my then-wife how her parents had met.
Learning that their encounter occurred at Manzanar, we journeyed into
the Owens Valley to visit it. There I started to understand how they,
along with 120,000 others at Manzanar and nine other similar locations,
spent a few years of their young lives. In a fit of wartime xenophobia
afflicting the U.S. government and much of the nation's population, they
and their families were forcibly uprooted from their homes, leaving
behind significant property and other items of value. My wife's
parents, along with most of the others incarcerated at Manzanar and the
other camps, were U.S. citizens. But because they were Nisei, they did
not look like the majority white American population, and so they were
objects of suspicion and hostility.
This was not America's finest hour. But it was a milestone in the
anti-Asian prejudice and exploitation that had been part of the
development and growth of the United States for the previous century and
more. (Unfortunately, events of the last year regarding the origin of
the corona virus pandemic have created an additional similar
milestone.) And yet, my education had taught almost none of this history.
Learning from this delayed education helped to make me a better person.
It gave me a better understanding of others who have backgrounds
different from mine. Since this has been a national educational
experience, I feel it has made the United States better, too. For any
country much of its history is deserving of pride, but some is the stuff
of shame. Nations that recognize and learn from their mistakes of the
past will grow, change and prosper. Those that do not will, I think, be
diminished.
The published remarks of the opponents to this ethnic studies class -- a
course that appears to be a telling of otherwise overlooked histories --
seem to me to be based on a fear that it will subvert the telling of the
American story as that of one undiluted success after another. If that
is so, then I will concede that their fear is to one extent
well-founded: education is the ignition of subversion. Learning
history helps us to understand the mistakes of our past and how to
benefit from the lessons of those mistakes. And, yes, education also
provides the foundation and the tools necessary to subvert obstacles
that are in the way of becoming better.
Most of what we have around us today is good. Let's not get in the way
of the young ones who want to learn how to take all around them that is
worthy and add to it. My high school education was all the poorer for
not telling the century-long story of the Manzanar episode. Curricular
mistakes like that are too easy to make because there is so much history
that needs telling. The proposed ethnic studies course cannot be
expected to avoid all such mistakes, but I think it will be a big help
and an educational step in a good direction.
If this is a skirmish it will fizzle. But it may be preamble to something big, possibly something like the answer to this question: What is the American identity? National identity is a fundamental cultural characteristic. It is one that has changed before, each time in the face of determined opposition. With each change the United States has grown, not diminished. There is no reason to think this time should be, or will be, different.
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