The Mountain View-Los Altos Board of Trustees, on Oct. 27, voted to turn Ethnic Studies, a freshman history class, into a semester-long class, rather than the full year the curriculum has been since it became a required course in 2022.
The state of California passed Assembly Bill 101 in 2021, mandating a required Ethnic Studies course at least a semester in length for all California public high schools. The Mountain View-Los Altos School Board approved a year-long Ethnic Studies class in April 2022, being one of earlier districts in California to do so.
According to their official high school district website, Mountain View High and Los Altos High strive for their students to “explore the American experience of our diverse community to build themselves as culturally-aware future leaders.” The curriculum utilizes socratic seminars and primary sources to explore cultural history in the United States while also offering an opportunity for students to share their own identities and histories.
Candida Diaz, a Los Altos High ethnic studies teacher, said ethnic studies is a crucial class for both the social studies skills and the opportunity it gives students to learn about their own histories.
“The discussions that we have in ethnic studies are really important,” Diaz said. “They’re meaningful, especially to students of color, where they may not hear about their histories or … have their backgrounds centered in [other] classes.”
Some ethnic studies students enjoy the course as is, such as current student and Mountain View High freshman Veer Oberoi. Oberoi said the course has succeeded in broadening her understanding of the world.
“I definitely think ethnic studies is the type of class that tries to teach you empathy [and] community while also giving a social historical background,” Oberoi said.
However, Oberoi criticized teacher bias in her opinion about the course, acknowledging that the opinions surrounding the ethnic studies curriculum are largely mixed.
“Ethnic studies is a very complex issue,” Oberoi said. “[The course] definitely needs more standardization. There shouldn’t be an amount of bias that a teacher can put into their own coursework, but at the same time, it can be such a valuable course. I’m not happy about it being one semester, and I only wish that they had considered reforming the course itself rather than giving up on it.”
Former ethnic studies student and current Los Altos High sophomore Ahaan Basu said that while ethnic studies was useful in learning more about the history of the Bay Area and its demographics, he ultimately said he found the class to be unhelpful with preparing him for future history courses. Basu said he felt the curriculum didn’t warrant a year-long course, and he was pleased when the Board’s decision shortening the course was made.
“During most of our classes, we just spent time reading documents and making posters without actually feeling the rigor or the importance of a real history class,” Basu said. “I was happy that [the Board] realized that the course could be shrunk into a semester’s worth of content, but I was also disappointed that half of my freshman year went to waste in ethnic [studies].”
Diaz said she is disappointed at the curriculum’s reduction to a semester and stressed — primarily thanks to the fact that a semester is not nearly enough time to build a community and cover every part of history in class. Diaz said she is unsure how the ethnic studies teachers plan to adjust going forward, particularly due to the nature of the course’s material being to highlight minority stories.
“I was sad,” Diaz said about the decision. “[A semester] goes by so quickly, and then how do we [ethnic studies teachers] cover the topics that we feel are important? How do we pick and choose what’s important to present to students?”
