Episode 5- Curriculum, Federal Government, and The 1619 Project

Welcome to Five Minute Fridays. I am Blake Barber and that was President Trump speaking of a recent Curriculum adoption by the State of California.  Don’t worry I am not here to talk about the debate. It is to stressful for me to think about or even speak about.  I am going to stay in my lane and keep this episode all things educated related. 

Anyway, The curriculum is a high school social studies curriculum built around the New Your 1619 project which is an initiative to reframe american history by first and foremost changing the date of America’s origin from 1776 and the signing of the Declaration of Independence to August 20, 1619 the first day that slaves arrived in the colonies.

The project, authored by Nikole Hannah Jones,  and the new curriculum use what is called critical race theory to analyze history and explain why the present is the way that it is. There a myriad of Critical theories: Critical Marxist theory, Critical Gender theory, and settler colonial theory are just few and each are simply acknowledging that the present is not made up rational individual choice, but that there structures and patterns at play that cause the world, and in the case of the 1619 project, this nation, to be that way that it is.   Now you may disagree with a particular critical theory but the idea that there are patterns and structures at play that cause humans to act in a subconscious way doesn’t need to be controversial. 

The adoption of the 1619 curriculum has happened in Chicago, but California was the first state to adopt it.  The curriculum supplements current history in its context with the belief that racism is systematically part of the DNA of the United States.  George Washington is still a president, Thomas Jefferson is still a major contributor to the declaration of independence.   Paul revere still road his horse yelling the british are coming.  It's just now their stories are more full.  They are not unblemished people. The nation is no longer exceptional. 

President Trump as you heard in the opening clip finds this divisive and a threat to the United states.  As a result, he claimed that he would federally defund schools in California if they taught the 1619 curriculum. Well under the Current Every Student Succeeds Act the federal government is not allowed to mandate what schools teach. And the majority of policy makers and people think this is a good law, therefore it matters.  However in the coming weeks it will be interesting to see what happens. 

As I was reading about this. I thought about curriculum.  While the federal government can not mandate what schools teach. States and local school districts can.  In the case of Tennessee the state creates a list of approved curriculums and districts choose curriculums from that list for their schools to use.

The interesting thing about Curriculums is they have become much more rigid and prescriptive.  You might hear a teacher say I am using a scripted curriculum, A curriculum that is telling them what to say.  The rise of curriculum rigidity and regulation is inversely related to the deregulation of teacher preparation and certification.  As teachers deprofessionalized Curriculum has become the solution… The silver bullet to bettering a district or a state. 

With this reality what ends up happening is schools and districts with abysmal standardized test scores adopt test prep curriculum in hopes of raising scores while elite private schools with Baccalaureate programs have curriculum that is driven by student inquiry.  Curriculum becomes another source of inequity in education. 

Currently this is happening in memphis,  the school district in the three years has had four different curriculums ranging from a rich meaning base curriculum that worked to help students build a better world to currently using a curriculum called epiphany education which is skill based test prep reading curriculum.  

This flux of change is not good policy making.  Parents I have linked a blog in the show notes for you to read.  The best thing you can do is hold you school accountable for making sure high quality curriculum is being used.  Teachers keep professionalizing yourself and advocating for your students. 

That concludes this episode of five minute fridays.  My call to action this week is to take 15 seconds and  share this episode on social media explaining why you think it is important.  Thank you so much for listening. I will see you next week.