•✩• Do The Standard Curriculums Fairly Represent Diverse Backgrounds?

[Tessie, Assistant Moderator]

Does a standardized curriculum promote fairness, or does it hinder equity by failing to represent diverse student backgrounds?

[siera ᯓ★ (nari’s vers.) (s.ia)]

as an asian kid in the public school system, we’re barely represented. i specifically went to a school with two other asian girls out of like 1000 kids and it was SO depressing. kids, specifically in america, are sorely lacking knowledge of other cultures. do you know how many times i had to explain to people that yes, even tho i wasn’t chinese, korean, or japanese, i was still asian? all the books we read are written by white people, there’s like one book for hispanic heritage, and the small small lessons about black history we get during february, and even with those it’s only ever about slavery and civil rights. it’s like the curriculum chooses one aspect of a culture and stereotypes it/ zooms in on it and doesn’t give students a proper, full sense into the cultures.

[siera ᯓ★ (nari’s vers.) (s.ia)]

if you don’t wanna read all that here’s basically the summary 😭: there’s barely any representation of other cultures in standard curriculums and you’re only really ever taught really small things and the cultures are super generalized.

[Khadijah]

I agree. I'm a Muslim and bisexual. In my 6th grade year I made presentations, slideshows, games, and activities for Islam. In 7th and 8th grade it was soooo much more structured so I couldn't share anything about my religion and then in 8th grade, my older brother and I were invited to our first meeting. It was just me and him in front of 15 staff members. I definitely think there needs to be more rep of a lot of groups. In my English 1 class we focus a lot on Indigenous people. In SEAC we talked about racism and student/student conversations and microaggressions in the hallways but it needs to be more specific and in depth. I get the issue but incorporate an all school assembly for various groups of people.

[Tessie, Assistant Moderator]

I completely agree. I’m homeschooled but my curriculum is commonly used in schools near me. Not only is my information commonly outdated and I am always complaining to my mom about important details they leave out, there is NO good representation. They don’t focus on any black or African American people, even essential ones like Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King Junior. I have seen no representation of any other races, or even women. The fact that this is a commonly used curriculum? No. If mine is anything to bad off of, and my public school friends’ knowledge is anything to base off of, there is nowhere near enough representation.
I despise the civil war, and not because of slacery, because of the way it’s taught. I think that part should be focusing on the struggles slaves go through, in depths of their lives. And political affairs. I don’t need to hear about how justified the farmers thought they were. And the fact it’s the only war my curriculum at least really teaches about? At this point I’ve heard every bit of American history and I study other countries by myself because I’m not going to any other way. Even if they do in other curriculums I’ve tried, it’s generalized the entirety of Asia. This is why if I ask my parents or a family friend anything about other countries, they’ll just tell me about china stealing our information or the UK has a king or queen and America is so much better because we don’t. This is the level of knowledge currently being taught about other ethnicities and races, and it really shows, and is really sad.

[Khadijah]

I know. Its really upsetting when you know the curriculum that you are learning from has zero true rep. from any sort of group.

[Tessie, Assistant Moderator]

Khadijah wrote: "I know. Its really upsetting when you know the curriculum that you are learning from has zero true rep. from any sort of group."

Yes! That was kind of a rant but it’s a serious issue. We don’t learn anything about smaller countries, like Kazakhstan for example. I loved Kazakhstan’s culture but school never even mentioned it. China, Japan, and Korea both north and south have all different cultures that deserve to be individually recognized and not grouped together by a ten minute ‘Asia lecture’.

[Sai :), Assistant Moderator]

yeah. like i get it, it is extremely important to know about america, but the bias is crazy. like we did such an in-depth study of semi modern europe, but we only covered other regions until medieval periods? europe isn't even that much more important than other countries, especially after the formation of america. and we never cover modern history. literally i have yet to learn a thing about the 1900s in school.

[siera ᯓ★ (nari’s vers.) (s.ia)]

had to explain to a classy of sixth graders i was from south east asia, that Vietnam and india were in fact in asia, and that asia was the biggest continent 😭 that was a hard day

[Sai :), Assistant Moderator]

siera ᯓ★ (semi-ia) wrote: "had to explain to a classy of sixth graders i was from south east asia, that Vietnam and india were in fact in asia, and that asia was the biggest continent 😭 that was a hard day"

what 😭
where did they think vietnam and india were bro

[Sai :), Assistant Moderator]

i also want to point out that a lot of textbooks have no issue referring to indigenous americans as "indians", like bro as an actual indian person i hate that. and im pretty sure actual indigenous people do too

[Nima]

siera ᯓ★ (semi-ia) wrote: "had to explain to a classy of sixth graders i was from south east asia, that Vietnam and india were in fact in asia, and that asia was the biggest continent 😭 that was a hard day"

frr like in elementary school I said I was Indian and the class thought I was Native American, and I was like no guys I'm Asian and they were so confused because I don't look east Asian 💀

[Sky ~take from you like you took from me~, Assistant Moderator]

In some grades, we learn a bit about other cultures, but definitely not enough. In 6th grade, I learned about Buddism, Doeism (sorry if I spell these wrong) and one other thing that I can't remember. I don't think I learned anything about other cultures in 7th grade, and I probably won't this year in American History. Perhaps there should be optional courses on other cultures, or have a bigger part of the current curriculum being other cultures?

[ashh ³³ ᵈᵘ ᵈᵘ ᵈᵘ]

having only ever experienced three years of normal public school (kindergarten, 1st, 5th), maybe i'm not the best to speak on this, but i live in an extremely blue state, and at least in my more specialized programs, we were encouraged and even required active discussions on modern race, gender, social and ethical issues (we'd watch the news sometimes lol), and had a big focus on independent study beyond state curriculum, so i definitely had the opportunity to do lots of research on lesser discussed sides of history
some of my favorites included french colonialism the the congo, the middle east partitions, navajo codetalkers, and we had a really big focus on indigenous peoples as well, and the important part was that we were supposed to connect these things in history with modern events. can we see effects of this today? is there something that we can apply from this to a current issue? etcetc, and i think that's really important for people to not only know history but also understand and connect it

[Khadijah]

that's valid.