When high school students in the West Hartford Public School District study World War II next year, they will learn more than just typical hallmarks like Japanese American internment camps. They will also hear about Sadao Munemori, a soldier who died protecting his comrades from a grenade. The 22-year-old posthumously became the first Japanese American to receive the Medal of Honor.
Such lessons that delve beyond settings have left teachers “humbled,” said Jessica Blitzer, the district’s social studies supervisor who helped design the curriculum for the high school grade levels.
“It’s one of those moments where you think, ‘How could we not have done that?’” “These are moments where you realize this is really important, especially given the population that we have in West Hartford, which is incredibly diverse in many ways,” Blitzer said.
Three years after Connecticut became the third state to require Asian American and Pacific Islander history in K-12 education, a cutting-edge curriculum is now being put into effect. Currently, education is universal in all grades except fourth and fifth. Most of the district’s 9,300 students will take integrated classes throughout the year. It won’t be a “Heritage Month approach,” Blitzer said.
Since anti-Asian hate surged due to the pandemic in 2020, advocates for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders have mobilized to make AAPI history mandatory learning through legislation or state education boards. today, Most AAPI adults want teachers to teach history through the lens of racismand slavery and segregation, according to the 2024 survey. There have been some successes, with about a dozen states passing laws requiring school curricula.
Besides well-known events, classes delve into topics such as stereotypes about South Asian and Vietnamese refugees. But as efforts increased, disagreements among Asian Americans increased.
More progressive voices question the fairness and optics of getting approval from lawmakers who have rejected history that focuses on other historically marginalized groups, such as an expanded black history curriculum that some critics have recently criticized as… Ideology woke up Or similar Critical race theory.
AAPI organizations, devastated by reports of thousands of verbal and physical attacks, including the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings that left six Asian women dead, have stepped up the pressure for more inclusive education. The hope was that teaching AAPI contributions would enhance understanding. In July 2021, Illinois becomes the first state to mandate Asian American history. In 2022, New Jersey and Connecticut followed suit.
An expanded look at history includes reading accounts of recent immigrants in San Francisco and Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court fights for birthright citizenship. It also includes the study of living figures such as Chinese-American architect Maya Lin.
Jason Oliver Chang, director of the Institute for Asian and American Studies at the University of Connecticut, helped develop legislation and train teachers. He remembers how lawmakers were influenced by the students’ testimonies.
“They were talking about their experiences living two lives — one at school, one at home — where they felt invisible and didn’t feel seen or respected by their peers,” Zhang said. “Every time someone who looks like them is mentioned in school curricula, it means they are the bad guys.”
President Donald Trump has intensified scrutiny of how schools handle race, threatening to withhold federal funds over diversity initiatives. The guidance has left some teachers unsure, although there are some anti-DEI measures in place Forbidden Or suspended by federal judges. Concerned teachers should adhere to the framework and consult with their colleagues, advises Kate Dias, president of Connecticut’s largest teachers union.
“Almost everyone who teaches content of this type does not do so in a way that says, ‘These are all the injustices of the world,’” Dias said. “The call to action is ‘Now you need to look at this information and you need to decide what it means.’”
Requiring AAPI history in schools has received bipartisan support. But in some conservative states, divisions have arisen over lawmakers who do not consider systemic racism and social justice essential to history.
When Florida adopted AAPI history legislation in 2023, critics viewed it as hypocrisy given that the state denied African American Studies for Advanced Placement for being “critical race theory.”
In Arizona, failed legislation mandating AAPI and Native Hawaiian history classes was approved by the Japanese American Citizens League. The Arizona chapter came out against it.
Chapter leaders asserted that the bill’s co-sponsor, Republican state Sen. John Kavanaugh, and other supporters were only interested in automatically stamping on sanitized history and ignoring African American and LGBTQ+ histories.
Kavanagh equates talking about systemic racism with indoctrination. He previously supported banning college groups based on racial or ethnic identity and high school ethnic studies classes that appeared politicized.
He says teaching history should be done “in an impartial and comprehensive way.”
“I certainly have no problem teaching the history of blacks or Latinos or anyone else,” Kavanagh said. “I don’t think there should be a high school course teaching students that this country is systemically racist when it’s not.”
The Arizona chapter of Make Us Visible, a national organization that tries to establish AAPI history in every state, has faced criticism for not recalling right-leaning lawmakers. Astraia Wong, the class director, declined.
“It’s really good that even a conservative senator supports it. That means there are some bones in it,” Wong said. “It should be bipartisan anyway.”
Amber Reed, co-executive director of AAPI New Jersey, finds it disturbing.
“What teacher would want to suddenly start teaching Asian American history when they are kind of discouraged from teaching African American history or Latino history, which is the history of all our communities,” Reed said.
Before next summer, West Hartford Public Schools will evaluate how to improve the curriculum.
The goal is not just to teach “doom and gloom” to the student body — of which white children make up about 55 percent, Hispanic students 21 percent, and Asian and black students more than 10 percent each — but a balanced view of history, Assistant Superintendent Anne McKernan said.
“There is resistance, there is perseverance, there is greatness,” McKernan said. “When I look at the changes at the primary level and the changes at the secondary level, it’s a much richer view.”
Elementary grades use books to learn culture, reading comprehension and vocabulary, said Erika Hanush, a literacy and social studies curriculum specialist for the district. For example, kindergartners read the picture book “Dumpling Soup” by Gamma Kim Rattigan. The film revolves around a family in Hawaii, and the characters come from different Asian backgrounds.
“It’s actually more grounded through the story and the lens,” Hanush said. “It gives teachers and students a natural opportunity to learn more about the place, the character and the traditions that come from those stories.”
___ Tang reported from Phoenix.