In the fall of 2016, California’s then Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a mandate to develop an ethnic studies program for high schools in California. California’s public schools have the most ethnically diverse student body in the nation, with three-quarters of students belonging to minorities and speaking over 90 languages. Luis Alejo, the Assembly member who shepherded the bill through the 15 years required for its adoption, hailed the law, the first in the nation, as an opportunity to “give all students the opportunity to prepare for a diverse global economy, diverse university campuses and diverse workplaces,” adding, “Ethnic studies are not just for students of color.”
Elina Kaplan, a former high-tech manager who had just stepped down as senior VP of one of California’s largest affordable housing nonprofits, remembers agreeing wholeheartedly with the idea at the time. “The objective was to build bridges of understanding between people,” said Kaplan, an immigrant herself, who moved to California from the former Soviet Union with her family when she was 11. “This was as welcome as mom and apple pie. It offered students the chance to learn about the accomplishments of ethnic minorities, as well as to address issues of inequality and bigotry.”
But three years later, when the first draft of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) was released, Kaplan couldn’t believe what she was reading. In one sample lesson, she saw that a list of historic U.S. social movements – ones like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Criminal Justice Reform – also included the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement for Palestine (BDS), described as a “global social movement that currently aims to establish freedom for Palestinians living under apartheid conditions.” Kaplan wondered why a foreign movement, whose target was another country, would be mischaracterized as a domestic social movement, and she was shocked that in a curriculum that would be taught to millions of students, BDS’s primary goal – the elimination of Israel – was not mentioned. Kaplan also saw that the 1948 Israel War of Independence was only referred to as the “Nakba” – “catastrophe” in Arabic – and Arabic verses included in the sample lessons were insulting and provocative to Jews.
Kaplan, 53, a Bay Area mother of two grown children who describes herself as a lifelong Democrat, was further surprised to discover that a list of 154 influential people of color did not include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, or Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, though it included many violent revolutionaries. There was even a flattering description of Pol Pot, the communist leader of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, who was responsible for the murder of a quarter of the Cambodian population during the 1970s.
Kaplan began calling friends. “Have you read this?” she asked, urging them to plow through the 600-page document. The language was bewildering. “Ethnic Studies is about people whose cultures, hxrstories, and social positionalities are forever changing and evolving. Thus, Ethnic Studies also examines borders, borderlands, mixtures, hybridities, nepantlas, double consciousness, and reconfigured articulations. …” This was the telltale jargon of critical race theory, a radical doctrine that has swept through academic disciplines during the last few decades.
The new curriculum, which will eventually be promulgated throughout the California school system of 6 million children, would “critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism … and other forms of power and oppression,” according to the proposal. It would “build new possibilities for post-imperial life that promotes collective narratives of transformative resistance.”
Capitalism was classified as a form of “power and oppression,” and although “classism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and transphobia” were also listed as forms of oppression, anti-Semitism was not. Jewish Americans were not even mentioned as a minority group.
It didn’t take long for Kaplan to realize that the education offered up by the ESMC had little in common with the program described at the time of the law’s passage. Instead, it was a crude pastiche of idiosyncratic neo-Marxism that advocated the end of capitalism and divided the world into a simple polarity of victims and oppressors. The victims, according to this schema, included four groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx, and Native Americans.
Kaplan quickly marshaled her skills honed as a nonprofit leader and co-created, with two other women, the Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies (ACES), to fight the adoption of the ESMC. The effort was urgent, she knew, because since California has the largest school system in the country, any curriculum it adopts will be exported to the rest of the country.
It’s a view that actively invites anti-Zionism into the classroom. It requires it. This is the greatest threat facing American Jews today.
As a refugee from the Soviet Union, she understood the challenge intimately. “The reason I’m doing this – full time and not sleeping” she said, is that “this curriculum is pervasive and all-inclusive. It creates a means of understanding the world that does not allow questioning. And it’s a view that actively invites anti-Zionism into the classroom. It requires it. This is the greatest threat facing American Jews today.”
Kaplan wasn’t the only one upset about the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. Clarence Jones, former legal counsel and speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr., in a letter he wrote to Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s Instructional Quality Commission, called the ESMC a “perversion of history” for providing material that refers to non-violent Black leaders as “passive” and “docile.” Jones, who is co-founder of the University of San Francisco Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice, decried the “glorification” of violence and Black nationalism as “role models for the students,” and rejected the curriculum as “morally indecent and deeply offensive.”
The unassailably liberal LA Times editorial board weighed in, criticizing the offering as “an impenetrable mélange of academic jargon and politically correct pronouncements” that served as an “exercise in groupthink, designed to proselytize and inculcate more than to inform and open minds.” It warned it was “in bad need of an overhaul.”
A group of Asian Americans urged the state to develop a program that would “inspire ethnic pride in all students and inspire them to work together, rather than against one another,” while Hindu, Korean, Armenian, and Sikh groups complained of being left out as did several Jewish groups. The California Legislative Jewish caucus published a letter saying the ESMC “effectively erases the American Jewish experience.”
Several émigrés from the former Soviet Union found the curriculum so traumatizing they couldn’t read it through. Three hundred signed a letter to Gov. Newsom and other state agencies saying: “We escaped a Marxist-socialist system and its associated tyranny and oppression. Never could we have imagined that, decades later, the same ideology and concepts that we escaped, would show up in, of all places ... the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.”
They wrote of their shock at seeing Marxist “code-words” in the text, such as urging students to fight for a “truer democracy,” which Marx used to refer to the abolition of private property. They also noted other terms that look innocuous or even enlightened to the uninitiated, such as “transformative resistance,” “radical healing,” “critical hope,” have specific meanings in critical race theory, which the ESMC explicitly directs teachers to use as the key theoretical framework for teaching ethnic studies.
Critical race theory in education, writes Daniel Solorzano, a scholar cited in the ESMC, “challenges the traditional claims of the educational system such as objectivity, meritocracy, color-blindness, race neutrality, and equal opportunity.” Critical race theorists argue that these traditional claims act as a camouflage for the self-interest, power, and privilege of dominant groups in U.S. society.
CRT is not just an educational pedagogy that seeks to overturn academics as we know it, but it is also a guide for activism “animated by the spirit of the decolonial, antiracist, and other global liberationist movements.”
Ethnic studies is a California native. It was born of a violent strike that erupted on the campus of San Francisco State College in 1968, triggered by the firing of a popular teacher named George Murray. The strike, led by the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front, was marked by huge rallies, bloody clashes with police, and eventually, the shutdown of the campus. It was finally settled when the president of the college accepted the strikers’ principal demands and agreed to establish degree-granting departments of Black and ethnic studies, to be housed in a separate School of Ethnic Studies that would include Black, La Raza, Asian American, and Native American studies.
There is a straight line from the 1968 strike to today’s ESMC, whose text explicitly acknowledges its debt to the Third World Liberation Front. In a speech a week before his firing, George Murray, who also served as the minister of education for the Black Panther Party, declared the U.S. Constitution was a “lie” and the American flag was a “piece of toilet paper” deserving to be flushed. He also attacked Jewish people as “exploiters of the Negroes in America and South Africa” and called for “victory to the Arab people” over Israel.
Many of the 18 people chosen by the State Board of Education’s Instructional Quality Committee to create the ESMC hail from San Francisco State’s School of Ethnic Studies, and most are adherents of the radical critical ethnic studies movement who refer to themselves as scholar-activists.
Kaplan reports that State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond admitted in a 2020 meeting with Jewish groups that there were problems with the creation of this group that allowed it to be politicized, and we have put systems in place to make sure they do not recur.
Nevertheless, in 2020, Gov. Newsom signed into law AB 1460, which requires that every student in the Cal State system – the largest four-year public university system in the country, of which San Francisco State is a part – take a three-unit course in ethnic studies. The governor’s decision defied the recommendations of the university’s own chancellor, members of the university’s board of trustees, and the university’s academic senate, all of whom opposed the bill, objecting to the government’s unprecedented intrusion into the university’s curriculum. The board of trustees had offered a competing proposal to require a course on ethnic studies and social justice, which would have included Jewish, LGBTQ and disability studies. Propelled by the momentum of the BLM movement in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, the governor rejected the board’s suggestion.
Several districts in California have already implemented ethnic studies courses on their own, independent of the ESMC. Some are controversial and some are not. Although the ESMC was originally intended for high school students, an entire chapter deals with K-12 integration. Because of the public outcry following the unveiling of the proposal, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required an ethnic studies class for graduation from high school. (The bill has been reintroduced.) Meanwhile, the city of Seattle has already created a proposed framework for implementing ethnic studies throughout its K-12 curriculum. Math teachers will ask the following questions: “identify how math has been and continues to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color,” “analyze the ways in which ancient mathematical knowledge has been appropriated by Western culture,” “how important is it to be right?” and “Who gets to say if an answer is right?” It appears educational leaders are all for this. The president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Robert Q. Berry III, told Education Week: “What they’re doing follows the line of work we hope we can move forward as we think about the history of math and who contributes to that, and also about deepening students’ connection with identity and agency.”
This, despite the fact that students in the United States already perform poorly in math. In the most recent survey conducted by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries, the U.S. placed an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among higher performing countries, the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.
One of the selling points for ethnic studies is that it would help California’s students do better in school overall. In 2019, only one-third of California’s fourth graders were reading-proficient. Only 25% of California’s total student population had basic reading skills. A suit brought against the state in 2017 by a group of parents, teachers, students, and advocacy groups claimed that “When it comes to literacy and basic education, California is bringing down the nation.” Among the 200 largest school districts in the country, California “had 11 of the lowest performing 26 districts, including three among the lowest performing 10 districts.” In February 2020, a state judge approved a settlement that requires the state to pay $53 million to improve basic literacy statewide.
Almost every article touting the ESMC makes reference to a single paper that showed some improvement in at-risk students who took an ethnic studies class. Thomas Dee, professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, compared a group of ninth grade students in San Francisco high schools at risk of dropping out with a similar group who took a class offering “culturally relevant pedagogy.” He described the results as “highly encouraging” – the latter showing improved attendance, completing more courses, and earning improved grades. Basically, students earning Ds became C+ students after taking the classes. This improvement, he said, is significant, as it means the difference between dropping out and being able to apply to college. Dee calls ninth grade a make-or-break year.
Dee described the classes less as instruction about other ethnicities and how they have succeeded in the U.S., and more as a social-psychological intervention that helps to “buffer students’ social identities in the classroom setting,” which might otherwise “affect their sense of belonging.” In other words, the teachers try to keep the kids from tuning out because of cultural influences that may make them feel they don’t belong and can’t succeed. He explained the classes as aiming to reduce “stereotype threat,” by identifying external forces that contribute to academic challenges and preparing for “how you may be misjudged.” He said the teaching has three defining traits: “an emphasis on student success, maintaining students’ cultural integrity, and promoting students’ capacity to think critically.”
But Dee cautioned that his study was small and its results not easily scalable. He explained that the teachers who offered the classes had spent “years developing them and getting them right” with the help of outside experts. “This kind of pedagogy requires teacher skills of a high order,” he said. He is not sure the ESMC, a huge statewide top-down project, is focused on providing the kind of sensitive, close teaching that produced the positive results.
He is critical of the ESMC’s chaotic rollout, which he characterized as a “hot mess.” “The motivation for ethnic studies is grounded in the idea that historically underserved communities don’t see themselves represented in the curriculum,” he said, a project he supports. However, referring to the team of CRT proponents that prepared the first draft, “The people who have been nurturing this flame for a half century are reluctant to give up control. I’m worried that the way it’s being rolled out might snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. By having such a high profile effort, it has become a flashpoint of the larger culture wars.”
“If done carefully, he emphasized, “this kind of teaching can improve student interest in learning. In the wrong hands, it can be feckless and counterproductive. We have evidence of real measurable innovation, but by pushing it the wrong way, California runs the risk of discouraging its adoption throughout the country.”
As a result of the outpouring of criticism of the first ESMC draft, in August 2019, Superintendent Thurmond ordered a revision. A second draft was completed in August 2020 and was immediately criticized for simply moving objectionable material to the appendices and footnotes. In the current, third draft, released in December, some of the most offensive material was actually moved back in. For example, an historical resource was added with the following description of prewar Zionism: “the Jews have filled the air with their cries and lamentations in an effort to raise funds and American Jews, as is well known, are the richest in the world.”
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of AMCHA Initiative, which fights campus anti-Semitism, points out that all 13 founding members of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association (CESA) are BDS activists. CESA, the national home base for critical studies, passed a resolution to boycott all Israeli academic institutions in 2014, and the group’s past four biennial meetings included multiple sessions demonizing Israel. “There are a couple thousand academic boycotters of Israel in the country,” she said, “and the largest percentage of them come from ethnic studies. Anti-Zionism is built into the theory and the discipline of ethnic studies, which demonizes Israel as an apartheid settler-colonialist Nazi state.”
But of even greater concern to Jews, she believes, is the singling out of Jewish students as enjoying racial privilege. “I don’t see any way that Jewish students can sit in an ethnic studies class and not feel they have a double target on their backs,” she said, fearing hatred and violence will ensue. First, because they’re Jewish, and considered white and part of the 1%, the purported villains of the teaching, and then through an assumed association with Israel. “There’s a state requirement that you have to sit through a class that says to Jewish students they have extraordinary racial privilege and yet forbids them from speaking because ‘this course is not about you?’ If you don’t accept it, you’re publicly shamed and ostracized – you can’t even speak up and say, ‘I’m not sure if I think that all white people are racists.’”
Jews are the only group in the curriculum for whom the term “privilege” is used. And this privilege is not earned by way of talent, or educational and professional attainment, but rather trickery.
To placate critics, the third version has added lessons about Korean Americans, Armenian Americans, and Sikhs. Two lessons have been offered about Jews. One, following crude CRT dogma, teaches that Mizrahi Jews coming to the United States from Arab lands were mistreated by “white” Ashkenazim. The other suggests that Jews of European descent have white privilege.
The Jewish Journal points out that Jews are the only group in the curriculum for whom the term “privilege” is used. And this privilege is not earned by way of talent, or educational and professional attainment, but rather trickery. The ESMC, echoing Nazi propaganda about Jews as impostors and appropriators hiding in plain sight, points out that American Jews often change their names (“this practice of name-changing continues to the present day”) to change their rank in the social hierarchy.
The historical reality of repeated genocidal attacks on Jews because of their perceived or imagined privilege is not offered as counterpoint, because ethnic studies teachers assume the Holocaust is taught in world history class. But next year in San Mateo County, world history will be replaced by ethnic studies. Lia Rensin, who has two children in public schools in the Bay Area, said the students already have no time. “I think I probably feel the way most parents feel – there are already a gazillion requirements. My daughter took two semesters this summer of online Spanish, so she could take art next fall in school. Now you’re thinking of adding yet another requirement?”
Meantime, Rossman-Benjamin said the ESMC creators are trying to reestablish their influence: “The people who wrote the first curriculum who are still very well connected are going school board by school board and getting them to agree to implement the discredited first draft.” In fact, school districts are free to follow any curriculum they want. There is no requirement to use the model curriculum.
Moreover, she said, “while everyone was going through the third field review, they are holding webinars and training sessions, they are recruiting faculty, and training the teachers who will need to be hired to teach ethnic studies.”
These teachers are warning that additional counselors will be required to help students deal with the trauma of the new content, she reports. In fact, the ESMC itself makes this suggestion.
Brandy Shufutinsky is an African American Jewish woman who is pursuing an Ed.D. in international multicultural education at the University of San Francisco. She opposes the ESMC. “It needs to be scrapped. Its foundations are faulty,” she told Tablet, having more of a “political agenda than an educational one.” Her interest is personal. The mother of four, she is concerned that “other states will follow the lead of California, and may have an impact on my own children in the future.”
She doesn’t approve of critical race theory, and she said the LA Unified Teaching District has already adopted a fine ethnic studies program that does not rely on it.
“I’m a progressive Democrat and have been for my entire life, and I come from a family of Democrats,” she said. “I don’t understand how someone who claims to be progressive can say they are against Israel. Israel is one of the most successful countries in terms of the indigenous rights movement. They have reclaimed a culture that was decimated and denied, reclaimed their religion, their peoplehood, and language in their traditional indigenous land. This is something that progressive people all around the world should hold up as an example, not demonize.”
And she has no patience for young people calling Israel an apartheid state. “They don’t know the history of apartheid – they’re too young to have experienced it themselves, and they seem not to have read too deeply about it either. It’s easy for people to imagine that Arabs are all Black and brown and the Israelis are all white. But it’s not true. Israelis are not white, but that’s a lie that the ethnic studies curriculum is built on.”
The State Board of Education will vote on the curriculum on March 17. Comments can be sent to the SBE and Gov. Newsom.
(42) randy gollay, February 9, 2021 3:12 PM
Science or Religion- why not choose both
Reality should be freedom to believe anything is possible- Education has to allow people to understand all difference from every angle imaginable. There is not a black or white issue- this is more than right vs wrong. It needs to be completely visible communication that is fair and just- all inclusive
Don't pass this legislation as is- it needs to be tweaked-please!!
(41) Tony Jacobs, February 6, 2021 10:50 AM
Orwellian Marxist nightmare
This should be a rallying point to everyone to the right of Marx.
(40) Bonnie, February 6, 2021 4:58 AM
sorry....correction it was 7000
God said I have reserved seven thousand whom have not bowed their knee to Baal nor kissed him....really the number is insignifigant? the main point is He will not abandon us? whom have a relationship with Him......we are in good hands.....I want Him to be my first priority.........not just a title? Saying I am a Christian! which words alone is cheap?....but rather doers of the Word.
(39) Alexander Dvorkin, February 5, 2021 9:34 PM
Are you surprized? Don't be. The worst is yet to come. I have seen it once already in the "glorious" USSR. In my worst nightmare I could not imagine something like this happening in the United States.
(38) Anonymous, February 5, 2021 6:34 PM
Fight anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is now reemerging in full force 75 years after the destruction of Nazi-Germany. Over the last decades it was cloaked under terms like "anti-Zionism". The 3rd and 4th post-WW II Jewish generations that grew up in the US spoiled and unimpeded in an atmosphere and self-delusion that Jew hatred had ended in1945. The gracious Jews became in all kind of matters in defense of oppressed minorities while ignoring issues of enmity towards Jews.
Now the unpleasant surprises have returned and our brethren don't know how to respond forcefully. Groups are organized to negotiate for recognition and empathy for status of Jews as a minority, who was often oppressed and persecuted. This situation is derided because of the relative widespread affluence of the American Jews. Has a modern version of the Medieval Ghetto arisen in progressive enlightened California?
There is only one way to confront these enemies. One negotiates with uncompromising strength and attacks if this does not bring the desired result. No compromise, no retreat - the anti-Semites of every origin and color must know that today we are fighting Jews, not weaklings as described in previous centuries.
(37) Norma Sherman, February 5, 2021 4:18 PM
What the heii ,is happening to America
California,was always a respectful state , for All! What’s happening?
Blayne Day, March 8, 2021 9:39 AM
The most Racist State in the USA.
I used to work in CA. and it is without a doubt the most Racist State in the USA. I spent 26 years in the US Army & US Air force & I Love my country. But, the US military is very anti-white & I would never be in such a Racist/Anti-white organization again. After living in Israel & 6 other countries for over 15 years I literally would rather live in almost any other country but my own because of the Racist attacks against white Americans & Jewish Americans. These are facts and can not be disputed. The leaders (Democrats) have one blueprint for white America and the name of that blueprint is South Africa/Hell. We conservative Americans need to start calling it as IT IS! AND TELL THE TRUTH! The Democrat party are the most Racist people in America but, only against whites & Jews today and always have been. (check the history) and are pushing black Americans to be Racist and judge others by their skin color. It's an American disaster.
(36) Allyson, February 5, 2021 12:33 AM
PCRC
I've been calling it "the people's communist republic of california" for years.
(35) Chavy, February 5, 2021 12:20 AM
George Orwell
George Orwell coming alive. This isn't only in relation to Jews. This is insane for everyone, as were the things that took place in George Orwell's novels.
(34) michael grant, February 4, 2021 6:43 PM
the stupidity has no end
why not just say lets go out and kill all Jews
every one is using Jewish inventions but lets kill the Jews
Islam and the Palestinians is the biggest lie of this and the former century's
REMEMBER G-D WILL NOT FORGET AND THERE IS A PRICE TO PAY
the death toll will be big remember
(33) Aviel, February 4, 2021 6:14 PM
exile is not the natural state of the Jews and the facts of this article is another wake up call
Jews have prospered in the USA but name changing, sometimes altering ones appearance, downplaying and at times even denying one's Jewish roots have been a part of the American experience for many Jews . Most Jews have wanted to be like everyone else but with a different ethnicity and/or religion not a people apart. According to the Torah and sages that seems not to be the way God intended. As I undersatnd it mankind will benefit from Jews observing the Torah's commandments and living in their homeland building a model society. That is our mission today. Those Jews who live outside are rapidly assimilating and it seems despite the efforts or aish.com and other outreach orgs the trend is accelerating.It's understandable when being Jewsih is viewed as a religion and the religion is no longer taken seriously by so many. An awakening is possible but I think Israel is the place for those who feel a responsibility to the Jewsih future.
(32) Ari, February 4, 2021 5:04 PM
People Get What they Vote For
Policies like this come from people voting without thinking. Tribalism, bigotry, and hate will get worse so long as the party that uses it as a tool is rewarded for it. People overwhelmingly vote for Democrats in CA, and this is one byproduct of single party rule. We get what we vote for.
(31) Rebecca Friedman, February 3, 2021 10:31 PM
Outrageous
Are we again in the dark ages of hate prejudice and misinformation?
(30) laura, February 3, 2021 7:14 PM
So Shocking and Sad
I am so shocked and saddened by what is going on in this country and in particular the school systems. It is so difficult to comprehend why such evil is perpetrated to brainwash our children. How much evidence does there have to be that ALL MARXIST SYSTEMS HAVE FAILED. The only thing the left is good at is brainwashing generations to believe the lies and drivel that they spew. They are haters and liers who want to totally decimate our wonderful country.
(29) Anonymous, February 3, 2021 3:50 PM
intriguing read
This was one of the most interesting and powerful articles I have read in quite a while. Appreciated your making it available. I've actually forwarded it to many friends/colleagues.
(28) Anonymous, February 3, 2021 2:56 PM
Marxism on steroids
Thank you AISH for publishing this exposition of the brain-washing agenda of the far left. If I lived in California, I’d be a home-schooling mom for sure.
(27) Jarrod Goldberg, February 3, 2021 12:45 AM
BDS
Keep voting Democrat California
(26) Lisa Shapiro, February 2, 2021 9:04 PM
Shameful
The California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum is rife with Anti-Semitism and needs to be revamped. I try not to believe that Anti-Semitism is on the rise, but, if this curriculum is anything to go by, it is definitely on the rise in California.
(25) Judd Capland, February 2, 2021 9:01 PM
Part of my family made it here.
A sizable portion of my family is known to me only by letters written before they were murdered. Upon learning about this program and what it teaches I find it hard to believe that this is even allowed in schools. The one thing my Father taught me is , as a Jew we have learned everything of value can be taken except and may be taken except our education. This must be taught in schools to all children. We owe this to them.
(24) Anonymous, February 2, 2021 7:49 PM
Link to document
There is a link to the original document in paragraph 5.
(23) Esther Zuckerman, February 2, 2021 6:02 PM
An impressive article that deals with miscarriages of justice
This new ethnic study program is one of the most repressive "educational" program out It will not create bridges but will discriminate against certain ethnic minorities especially Jews who have always been at the forefront of the fight for racial equality
(22) John, February 2, 2021 1:25 PM
Debunking the unspoken myth
There is a myth propogated by leftists, the myth that underlies the culture of victimhood. So let's set the record straight. There is no such right as the right to never be offended. Deal with it. Only G-d has that right. Seditious agendas (left or right) make the suggestion or assumption that such a right exists when it does not. Then these agendas usually put forth the "you poor victim" bait. Then they propose a solution that by intent is designed to offend the guilty-before-tried alleged perpetrator, the real victim. If you are insecure, that is your personal problem. Others may have been imperfect, but the choice to internalize was yours alone. And only you can choose to overcome your own self-inflicted victimization. ( No, we are not discussing crimes.) Seditious agendas that are not Torah-practice based must of necessity fail. Like Obamacare (no, we are not discussing Obamacare), it was claimed that it was intended to fail so some more radical agenda could be enacted. Such is, I suspect, the purpose of the legislation discussed in the article: a means to another end. Such is, I believe, the whole purpose of "social engineering." It is not actually intended to improve things but to pave the way to permanent serfdom for the masses. And it is cluessly, self-righteous, goody two-shoes busy-bodies that end up being the unwitting tools of the dark force behind these schemes, and clueless complacents its enablers. Pull back the curtain and discover the real "wizard of Oz." Rejection of truth. Self-sovereignty. Rebellion against Torah, against G-d. "There is a way that seems right in the eyes of humans, but the end thereof are the ways of death."
Anonymous, March 8, 2021 10:04 AM
Very good reply John
I ask one question to people in every country I work & live in..."What is your definition of the word Truth?" Try it sometime & watch people stumble & fumble for an answer... I've lived, traveled & worked in 26 countries & without a doubt Israel after studying the people & Nation for nine months( the Jewish population mostly) I found without-a-doubt the best answers of all the the Nations comes from the Jewish people of Israel. And of course there's only ONE answer to the question... What's yours John? Vr Blayne.
(21) Anonymous, February 2, 2021 1:42 AM
Oy gevalt
In my humble opinion, it is wicked to focus on "oppressions" and "abuses" - spreading a disease of restless, hate-filled hearts spoiling for a fight, intent on causing divisions. Name one group by any definition that has not been the victim of and/or the perpetrator of some wrong or injustice. This so-called cancel culture only serves to play both ends against the middle. This is a simple divide and conquer strategy that America has fallen prey to. Instead, treat others the way you want to be treated. This is what must be taught. This value must be inculcated thoroughly in society. We must, instead, teach the good that various races/ethnicities have done for each other, emphasize the positive ways we've influenced each other, defining good by Torah standards, if not overtly, then surely by the benefits Torah values reap. (Contrary to what some atheists sometimes believe, NO, one can NOT be good without G-d. If you take G-d out of good, all you have left is, ...Oh. ...as we are seeing.) Building each other up is one major way to affect tikkun ha-olam. We understand this. So let us take the lead in insistently making this the healing social movement.
Rachel, February 2, 2021 2:41 AM
It’s called history
Perhaps you don’t believe history should be taught at all. However, history is messy because human beings are messy. Some are very good, some are truly evil, and the vast majority of us are a combination. I can remember when girls were not permitted to take shop and boys were not permitted in home economics. In my parents’ lifetime, schools were segregated by race. We do better when we examine the way things are and discern what makes sense and what is based on stereotypes.
Anonymous, February 2, 2021 11:21 AM
No.
When the progressives/liberals try to teach anything, history becomes mystery.
The point of the article was that a piece of legislation is promoting racial/ethnic division. OP suggestion was to promote mutual racial/ethnic appreciation. Perhaps if you actually read the article before posting an unrelated comment.
Rachel, February 2, 2021 5:48 PM
My comment was in response to anonymous 22
Perhaps you should have read the comment to which I was reacting.
Anonymous, February 2, 2021 11:13 PM
Reading comprehension
I read. You missed the point. Your attitude is what OP was criticising. He/she said no one or group is perfect but that focusing on the negative (which is what you did, and made an unfounded accusation - a Torah violation, btw) is not the answer, as you suggest it is. His/hers was a simple, correct, positive, hope-filled suggestion that did not require your input. History is fact, not a blame game or an excuse for it. It happened. We do better when we look at what Torah commands and do that. THAT and that ALONE is how you overcome and avoid repeats. Anything short of that is the problem.
Rachel, February 3, 2021 2:22 AM
Who is OP?
I don’t understand what you are talking about. And please cite your source that the Torah forbids “focusing on the negative .” The Torah teaches us about many negative things, and then instructs us how to change things to be good, even holy. Kind of like history can instruct us....
Anonymous, February 8, 2021 2:35 AM
Explanation
What I said was that making an unfounded accusation is a Torah violation. But as well, only focusing on (the key word, I think, or maybe accentuating ) the negative at the expense of the positive (or even vice versa) does not bear true witness. That is, by "leaving out", one commits a lie of omission about whatever. That is bearing false witness. Falsely accusing and omitting both violate the 9th commandment. That goes both ways, omitting good or bad. So OP could be wrong too. But in order to heal, we have to tone it down and learn to see the humanity, the positive first. Then, once we truly learn to see our neighbor, a fellow human who had worth and hurts and brokeness of his/her own, then we need to see our own failings/brokeness and responsibilities - not just blame but responsibilities for our own healing. (There are always at least 2 sides to a story). Then we can focus on all parties involved participating in righting wrongs together and individually, and forgiving. (Not forgiving is also wrong. And forgiving does not mean being ok with something. It means accepting it happened, bearing the scars, and moving forward - moving forward, not moving on). Anyway, for what it's worth, this is how I understand tikkun ha-olam. Shalom.
Christian, February 8, 2021 1:13 PM
Hm...
Interesting... you think that's what this article is doing? Remaining positive and understanding of other people who might have different views than them? To me it looks like some valid points that have been amplified by hatred of stereotypes of US liberals liking communism - which is bearing false witness to some extent, because you can agree with some of Marx's ideas without agreeing with all of them, like communism for example.
Are you also advocating for never teaching the holocaust in schools? Is the real argument of this article the fact that only one side of the story is being told (the non-jewish side) and that it should be *both* sides being told, or should it just be the *jewish* side of the story?
John, February 9, 2021 12:00 AM
Try again...
I took it the OP was offering an alternate approach to the hate-filled rhetoric / legislation of the left - to see the good in others.
And I took the article to be a cry of panic over the legislation.
As for me, I'm calling for hot-heads on both sides to stand down and to really see each other, to see precious souls, to look beyond the fault to the need, to see the good as well as the bad in others AND in themselves. In Jewish legal tradition, a unanimous vote to convict begets acquittal because of perceived lack of mercy on the part of the sanhedrin. And one vote to acquit - which could not be changed - begat conviction. And no trial could be held at night or without at least 2 witnesses certified credible. And a false witness found false received the intended sentence of the one on trial. In other words, let's be careful in our testimonies and in how we judge. Personally, I fear the weaponization of government by any group and believe we are there. Remember Haman? May Messiah come today. Shalom.
(20) Jess Brown, February 1, 2021 5:44 PM
I signed the Petition
This is scary and we all have to make our voices heard.
We will not tolerate Anti-Semitism being taught to our children and hate crimes against the Jewish people.
(19) Josh Gilder, February 1, 2021 12:43 PM
I am surprised that you are surprised-
I am surprised that you are surprised- “a lifelong Democrat” - in California -
Have you not been paying attention to the agenda of the party which selected Wilson, FDR, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden, and on and on?
(18) Anonymous, February 1, 2021 12:10 PM
Tony Thurmond is Jewish1
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, mentioned in the article, is Jewish and when he served in tbe state legislature was a member of the California Legislative Jewish caucus.
(17) Carol Barham, February 1, 2021 5:19 AM
This is not just against Jews...it is against human beings...created by GOD
As a Christian who loves Israel and the Jews and prays for you daily....this is heartbreaking. But as you read it...this is against Christians too...it is really a destructive and demonic force to destroy human beings lives.....a recipe of Murder and sanctioned by a governmental body. To have this in our nation....that claims to be the HOME OF THE FREE and HOME OF THE BRAVE...is horrific. THis was not what the founders of this nation came to do. It was horrific and unacceptable what many of them did to destroy much of our native people to take the land. But in this time.....all these centuries later...this is not freedom...this is COMMUNISM 101. The State of California keeps going further left and is destroying itself from within. Blessings and Protection to Prayers for the People of the USA from this criminal and demonic lawlessness. Thank you for sharing. We need the education. Blessings to you and all of Israel and to the United States of America...where Freedom MUST Reign...true FREEDOM. We must be safe in this land....we the people of the United States of America.........BLessings.
(16) Sheldon Padawer, February 1, 2021 4:04 AM
Satisfaction of breaking a face
I watched a guy with an oak pole smash a guy's face in when the fellow dissed his girlfriend with the "Jew" nose. He told his lady "sorry but he had it coming". They got in their pickup and drove off. We hiked a little ways up the trail to Alabaster Caves, but I hurt my groin muscle and we had to head (limp painfully) back to the parking lot. When we got back forty minutes after the "incident" the police were rendering first aid and an ambulance was coming. His cheekbones were concave and his nose was pushed back in his head. He may have had a skull fracture. The Park Police asked if we knew what happened my buddy quickly said "we've been all the way to the caves and just got back. It is well known to be a 2 hour round trip.
Most of these dweebs don't expect a Jew to resist or fight. They also don;t expect a Jew to be a collegiate wrestler at UTK whose girlfriend has a "Jew" nose. This occurred in 1977 in the Smokey Mountains. He became a consultant to the U. S. and several other Olympic teams. His girlfriend eventually won a Bronze medal in the Olympics.
(15) Rachel, January 31, 2021 9:56 PM
Ethnic and minority studies should be more inclusive
It is important to know about other cultures, but it should be taught factually. For example, NYS curriculum added info about the huge wave of Irish immigration in the mid-19th century. Western schools often include the Mormons, who went west to escape religious persecution, in teaching about westward expansion.
In general, however, schools are loathe to get into anything that mentions religion, and Jews are not treated in the curriculum as a specific minority religious/ethnic group but are instead lumped in with all other non- Anglo Saxon immigrants.
In the lower grades, diversity should only focus on positive info. In upper grades, it is appropriate to examine the various forces at work, some of which are not positive.
As for universities, requiring undergrads to all have one 3-credit course in ethnic studies out of 120 credits total does not seem onerous. I had to suffer through courses to meet grad requirements that had nothing to do with my chosen major either, including BASIC computer programming. (Younger readers will have to look that up.)
Above all, factual, age appropriate curricula free of any particular political agenda should be the norm. The massacre of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century is included because it's of obvious importance to the Armenian-American community, which fought for it. And unpleasant facts in American history should not be whitewashed, whether it's the Salem witch trials, slavery, genocide of Native Americans, the internment of Japanese Americans during a World War II, civil rights, etc. You can't build a better future if you don't know the truth about the past.
(14) Anonymous, January 31, 2021 9:03 PM
accuracy is important
Good article about a terrible injustice. However, Dunkirk is in FRANCE, not Belgium.
(13) James Andrews, January 31, 2021 7:48 PM
This is Appalling
The report fails to mention Jewish-Americans as a minority group, much less the mention of anti-Semitism as form of oppression. There should be outrage by Jewish-Americans for this complete work of ignorance that fails to recognize one of the most oppressed groups in history. I am very disappointed in the State of California Board of Education for allowing this "erasure" of Jewish History.
Very disappointing and upsetting.
(12) Ruth Broch, January 31, 2021 6:58 PM
The End.
In my opinion, America is simply too terminally ill to continue. Jews of America - get out as fast as you can and come home to our ONLY homeland, Israel, before it is too late. Do you STILL not see the writing on the wall? America is now this generation's new Nazi regime. Do not say later on that you weren't warned!!
Rachel, January 31, 2021 9:34 PM
And what are we supposed to do when we get there?
I know several people who have tried to make Aliyah. They have run up against Sabra prejudices because they are not fluent in Hebrew, have not served in IDF, etc.
I can understand
Israelis are no more happy about a big influx of foreign Jews, just as Americans are in many cases not pleased about the arrival of Hispanic Christians from South America.
Sara Rigler, February 1, 2021 1:33 PM
Not true!
I have lived in Israel for 35 years, having made aliyah in 1985. It is absolutely not true that there is any prejudice against those who don't speak Hebrew. And it is libel to say that Israel's Jews don't want Jews who make aliyah. This is the opposite of the truth. Israel has been practically begging Jews to come since its inception. You are welcome here.
Rachel, February 1, 2021 4:04 PM
Anecdotal evidence
OK, you had a great experience. I know people who have not.
My husband looked into job opportunities (he is an engineer) and was told that they were not interested. I have read about housing shortages. My elderly mother-in-Law, a Holocaust survivor, was told that her US health benefits would not cover her.
Again: countries have the right to admit whom they choose, and Israel has the very generous right of return. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a feasible option for all.
MDG, February 2, 2021 2:34 AM
During Coid-19 ther are maybe a milloion Israelis unemployed
But onthe whole- if u want tolive here -uhavetohavethe strength to live thruthefirst few years
Do u think it is easy when someone emigrates tothe USA ? And Israel gives so many benefits for new Olim
And yes,you will probably not live onthesame materialistic level as in thUSA -but u will grow spiritually
Nancy, February 3, 2021 9:54 PM
Sara Rigler
I am so very happy for my 2 girlfriends who were successfully able to make aliyah. However, I know of someone who did not make aliyah because her husband was not on board. I also know someone who lived in Israel for two years and eventually returned to America. Nobody can make a blanket statement telling EVERYONE to make aliyah. That just isn't realistic.
(11) Frances Rhoda Dickman, January 31, 2021 6:13 PM
Shocking!
Doesn't surprise me since California and their loyalty to the new far left Demoncrats would introduce such a program. Teaching our children in most Demoncratic run states and cities to hate has been ongoing for years. It has to stop but how? It is frightening what is happening to our country where lying, cheating and rioting is applauded and not protested. As a legal immigrant from the UK since 1964, it scares me to the bone what has happened to the United States of America and whenever I post something to that effect, I am cancelled.
(10) Michael W Cuber, January 31, 2021 6:08 PM
California derailed years ago
As a child of Czech Jewish immigrants, I can say that being anything "other" would just get you beat up in school. Left that quagmire 30 years ago, and never looked back--all productive persons should move out of CA!
(9) Andria Switzer, January 31, 2021 6:04 PM
Stop Critical Race Theory and Ethnic Studies lies and bigotry
Americans of all backgrounds need unite to stop this madness. Teaching children lies, dismissing history, ignoring antisemitism, denigrating Israel, promoting terror regimes and leaders is unAmerican, dangerous and definitely not an education.
(8) Anonymous, January 31, 2021 5:41 PM
Thanks for shining a light on this important finding
(7) Augustine Zuniga, January 31, 2021 4:52 PM
History
Gaspar Zuñiga viceroy to New Spain ( southwest USA n Mexico . Where did his roots come from ? Sephardad ( Spain) Zuñiga . Navarre Spain hometown n before ? Israel !!!
(6) SteveHC, January 31, 2021 4:09 PM
When in doubt just THROW IT OUT
This racist, anti-American and anti-semitic so-called “curriculum” does NOT need yet another insanely biased revision by the same people who created the original piece of trash. It needs to be thrown out, the committees and groups that were formed to help design it disbanded, and the entire project officially scrapped by the government officials and others who called for the creation of this highly offensive and genuinely grotesque monstrosity in the first place.
(5) Angelika Maeser Lemieux, January 31, 2021 4:05 PM
fight CRT
Unless there is a concerted effort by many people to fight CRT in education, it will totally brainwash the youth of today and continue to spread a poisonous pedagogy.
(4) Andrea Chester, January 31, 2021 3:41 PM
Wow...really something to think about
As a non-Jew who lives in the mountains of western North Carolina, I don’t often witness this kind of re-writing of history on a personal,well-educated level. Similarly, as a white woman, I didn’t experience a whole bunch of racism. It alarms me to realize that this sort of thing is going on, is wide-spread, and is done in the name of “inclusiveness”, as if it is a good thing. Never “saw” it...but this article shows a face of something creeping over our world that scares me. May GOD give us eyes to see, and wisdom to know how to act ... ThankYOU.
(3) David Cohen, January 31, 2021 3:07 PM
Link to original document
Can you please provide a link to the full document. What I have found online is so far is somewhat less inflammatory than what is being described in this article.
(2) Nancy, January 31, 2021 2:33 PM
There is nothing new under the sun
This scenario has played out in previous decades. I attended a public high school where the white, Jewish students were pushed aside. It hurts so much to see this destruction continuing into the 21st century.
(1) Pamela Fleischmann, January 31, 2021 2:27 PM
Destable curriculum
This is a horrible curriculim and should not be adopted. The article didn't suggest ways to protest it, which would have been helpful. To whom can people write to complain? Can't the ADL step in, or some other group committed to fighting historical revisionism?
jamie, January 31, 2021 2:34 PM
there is a link at the end of the article...
where you can post a comment to CA officials. Keep up the pressure.
Michael W Cuber, January 31, 2021 6:16 PM
Bottom of Page...
There were two links at the bottom of the article to voice your feelings directly!
Jess Brown, February 1, 2021 5:54 PM
I signed my name
At the end of the article there is a link,
The State Board of Education will vote on the curriculum on March 17. Comments can be sent to the SBE and Gov. Newsom.
I signed my name on the petition