How about Cesar Chavez? In Texas, the State Board of Education has been mulling those very questions. Two members of a Board-appointed advisory panel suggested removing both Chavez and Marshall from the fifth-grade social studies curriculum, arguing that they don’t stand quite as tall in the American story as, say, Ben Franklin.
For what it’s worth, the Texas Board of Education doesn’t appear to be willing to boot either Chavez or Marshall from the curriculum. But they may remove Chavez from a list of historic “model citizens” – a list that for some reason doesn’t include Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks.
The insult – intentional or neglectful – to communities of color is pretty clear. But what really frustrates me is the framework of the whole discussion. I think Texas took a wrong turn when they started putting these leaders on the scales and weighing them against one another.
Yes, classroom time is finite, and yes, we have to make choices about what understandings must be taught. Yet how we frame our choices is crucial. If you frame the conversation as a battle between white heroes, black heroes and Latino heroes -- as the Texas advisory board did -- you’re always going to get a result that angers and excludes people. When you create a short list of model citizens, you’re putting citizenship in a box on a high shelf, where it can’t be reached. If you assume, as we so often do in this country, that we can cover either multicultural content or “the basics,” you’ve defined the result from the start.
That either/or is an illusion. Through the lives of Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall we get a chance to look at both the American system and the experiences of people who have historically been excluded by it.
Has this sort of battle been waged in your district? Is there a way to rethink the curriculum without creating conflicts of this sort? I’d love to hear your stories.
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I honestly don't know enough
I honestly don't know enough about Cesar Chavez. I know he was for rights for the pridominately field workers.
But Thurgood Marshall...in edujucation...in Texas...Please!
Simply let them watch the amazing story "Seprate but Equal" It was ALL ABOUT EDJUCATION. He came to hold one of the highest positions we have in this country.
What both of these men did was huge then, but just as big now! To give hope to our youth of any race, that ONE PERSON, can make a difference!
I personaly know that our fore fathers were important, but I can't really relate. History, not so long ago, is much more relateable and important for our youth to identify with. A touchable goal/bar to reach!
To Learn More About Chavez
To Learn More About Chavez ... Check out Teaching Tolerance's free film kit about him and the farmworkers' movement he spearheaded: There are lessons listed there as well. A good activity to know more about Chavez, without the film, is Committing to Nonviolence. He is one of the great modelers of nonviolent social change.
Who cares? Who will it
Who cares? Who will it effect? Why do we get a chance to pick and choose whose gift to the universe is better than the other? Let's focus on the need to provide equal opportunity, which these men have done, education, health care for all.
Pick up the pace where they left off and make a contribution yourself. What will our children think of us "changing history or "ourstory?
I think it is interesting
I think it is interesting that curriculum in our schools spend days or even weeks on prophesying Christopher Columbus but now do not want to talk about the works of Marshall or Chavez.
We learn that Columbus was a great man who founded America and we even divide American history into “pre” and “post-Columbian” eras. What we neglect to teach is many other explorers had reached the Americas before Columbus and more importantly that Columbus and his crews took land, wealth, and labor (slavery) from the indigenous people in the Americas.
Now, this is not a debate on Columbus, but the fact is that if this much time is spent on a man who kidnapped indigenous people into slavery, we should definitely have room to talk about Marshall and Chavez.
Marshall is not only is an amazing American figure who helped overturn “separate but equal”, but he was the first black Supreme Court Justice. Marshall is a very important part of American history, and in my opinion, should be talked about for days or weeks in a classroom instead of Columbus.