Abstract:
Europeans subjugated and tried to erase the knowledge systems of the peoples they colonized or enslaved. The school curriculum of today embodies that colonial knowledge, and as such, serves as an instrument of social control. For historically subjugated communities, unearthing and teaching subjugated knowledge is part of the process of political liberation because it reframes who a people is, why and how today’s unjust power relations were constructed and maintained, and what can be done about it. In the U.S, this reframing is most evident in Ethnic Studies. Ethnic studies refers to curriculum (and pedagogy) that centers the perspectives and knowledge systems of historically subjugated peoples. As de los Rios argues, “Curriculum represents one of the primary instruments for maintaining the legacy of hegemony in U.S. schools,” and “Ethnic Studies works to recover and restore counterhistorical narratives as well as the epistemologies, perspectives, and cultures of those who have been historically marginalized and denied full participation within traditional discourses and institutions”. This paper will briefly review what Ethnic Studies is, and what it looks like in practice at the K-12 level. The paper will then share a synthesis of research studies that consistently find Ethnic Studies to have a positive impact on minoritized students, and a generally positive impact on white students, and discuss how that research is leveraged to support policies instantiating Ethnic Studies in schools