Since 2016, many Californians and advocacy groups have participated in contentious public debates regarding the state’s piloting of ethnic studies, first through a state model curriculumand now as a mandatory high school course. On one side, proponents tout the educational and emotional benefits of teaching ethnic studies as evidence for large-scale applications. On the other side, critics scrutinize the philosophical underpinnings of critical theory in both the state-approved Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) and the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.

In September 2021, my group Californians for Equal Rights Foundation and three San Diego parents sued the California Department of Education (CDE), the SBE and the State of California on the state-sanctioned promotion of two problematic affirmations in the ESMC. Our legal challenge was successful because the defendants entered into a settlement with us last month and agreed to remove the “In Lak Ech” and “the Ashe” affirmations from the state model. By doing so, the state authorities affirmed their “continued and long-standing commitment to ensuring appropriate treatment of religion in a secular public education context.” Unfortunately, our lawsuit has been mis-characterized as a right-wing “erasure of Indigenous knowledge” and a ban on Native philosophies.

Such crude accusations are needlessly inaccurate and inflammatory.

Knowledge can’t be banned simply because of the removal of two religious chants

Nowadays, the phrases “book banning” or “banning knowledge” are abused by political pundits to trigger emotional antagonism toward heterodox attempts that challenge the education status quo. It is a politically charged overreaction that generalizes dissent as assaults on free speech. Our legal challenge was not intended to prohibit or restrict teaching of Native cultures or Indigenous philosophies. All sample lessons for Chicano Studies and Native American Studies are still intact in the ESMC. Nor did we ask the court to remove the entire “In Lak Ech” affirmation which is still featured in Chapter 5 of the updated ESMC, just without the 20 times of chanting to Tezkatlipok, Quetzalkoat, Huitzilopochtli, Xipe Totek and Hunab Ku.

The main claim we raised in the narrowly tailored challenge is whether or not any government entity should expend taxpayer resources to endorse religious activities, including affirmations that give repetitive thanks to six Aztec, Mayan and Yoruba deities in the name of affirmations or energizers. One doesn’t need to prompt students to call out to Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, or Paul the Apostle multiple times in order to teach history of Christianity. By the same token, is it necessary for educators to use a modern rendition of ancient Aztec and Toltec religious chants to facilitate learning of Indigenous societies?

Therefore, a central fact pertinent to the lawsuit, aside from the technical differentiation between Mayan and Aztec history, is just this: can the State of California use public resources to promote religion over non-religion, certain religions over others?

Ethnic Studies should be taught constructively

While California is the first U.S. state to mandate ethnic studies for all public schools, the dust has not settled in terms of local-level implementation. The more consequential issue, beyond our legal probe, is that each California school district needs to adopt an ethnic studies curriculum that prepares students to “be global citizens with an appreciation for the contributions of multiple cultures,” as required by law. Like any other new scholarly discipline, ethnic studies must be treated as a rigorous academic endeavor that is rooted in empirical testing and re-testing, not dogmatic presumptions on race, racism and power.

Notably, the vast majority of the public, across racial and political lines, want a more balanced way to teach ethnic studies, different from the critical pedagogy lens in the ESMC.

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Before its finalization, three earlier drafts of ESMC generated a total of 62,000 public comments addressing the State Board of Education (SBE), most of which were not in support.

Two of the three co-plaintiffs in our lawsuit are Californians of Hispanic descent, who simply don’t want their proud heritage to be proselytized through any ideological prism. Last year, my group led a diverse, bipartisan alliance against critical ethnic studies, in which 28 co-signing organizations representing a broad range of supporters demanded a balanced, unabridged, nuanced and constructive way to teach ethnic studies.

Last but not least, there are several curricular alternatives in the marketplace of ideas for individual school districts to consider when adopting their own ethnic studies paradigms. Parents, community members, teachers and education policymakers should work together at the local level to determine their own mode of knowledge acquisition for ethnic studies. They should not, on the other hand, be distracted by baseless political meddling that caricatures a complex process of public policy deliberations into zero-sum, us-versus-them theatrics.

Wenyuan Wu is executive director at the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation.