In a five-hour meeting last spring, the Palo Alto Unified School District Board of Education voted 3-2 to approve an ethnic studies class as a graduation requirement for the class of 2029. After months of controversy and heated board meetings where students, teachers and community members shared clashing perspectives and recommendations on the curriculum, the course is now a required first-semester social studies class for freshmen.
Student perspectives on the effectiveness of the class continue to vary.
Freshman James Trounce said he prefers the previous requirement for freshmen, a full year of World History, instead of the current requirement of one semester of Ethnic Studies and one condensed semester of World History.
“Ethnic Studies is useful to some degree, but it’s basically trying to convince us that racism is a bad thing, and we already know that,” Trounce said. “It’s not teaching me as much as, for example, my eighth grade world history, where we learned about the Revolution and the Civil War. Ethnic studies mostly focus on groups, not events. I’m not saying it’s completely useless to understand how these groups feel, but I don’t think that it’s as helpful as world history.”
Sophomore Vedant Paramesh, who opted to take the first semester of Ethnic Studies last year as a part of its pilot program, disagrees. He said the class was far more interesting than the second semester of World History, because of its cultural focus and project-based structure.
“There were numerous projects that were left open-ended for us to engage in whatever interested us,” Paramesh said. “For example, I was able to do a project based on people-of-color restaurant owners since I really enjoy cooking and got to learn a ton about their journeys and experiences that I wouldn’t have in a regular history class. My friends would complain about learning a lot about just Europe and the French Revolution, while we got to dive deeper into many of the bigger problems like race and sexuality in the US and how they have affected how the country operates as a whole.”
And sophomore Sophie Stillger, who also took the course as a pilot last year, said she finds Ethnic Studies more engaging than any history class she has taken.
“I preferred Ethnic Studies over most of my previous history classes, as it was definitely more engaging and interesting,” Stillger said. “I used to dread history in sixth through eighth grade; I didn’t like the subject and kind of felt like it was useless, but ninth grade Ethnic Studies made me have a new perspective on history class.”
Ethnic Studies teacher Christopher Farina said he thinks there is a misconception that learning about world history is minimized by a semester of required Ethnic Studies. Since Contemporary World History is taught sophomore year, students still fulfill the one-year requirement of world history, but they miss out on the excess semester.
“In some ways it absolutely takes away content from three semesters down to two, so you have got to make cuts,” Farina said. “But I think the trade off is we get a course like Ethnic Studies that lets them understand their local histories and their own identities a lot better. We think that’s worth it.”
Regardless of content, Sophomore Naia Tormala, also part of last year’s pilot group, said she thinks Ethnic Studies teachers created a strong sense of community in the class.
“A large focus at the beginning of the year was on getting to know each other and creating relationships,” Tormala said. “My teachers were amazing at teaching these subjects, and they made it very clear that it may sometimes be uncomfortable, but they were there for me.”
Ethnic Studies teacher Benjamin Bolanos also said the class approaches and discusses topics through an academic lens.
“We go into it with this mindset that we’re educators, and these are the concepts and realities that we face every day,” Bolanos said. “You can deny that race doesn’t exist because it does, and it has real effects even though it’s socially constructed. So those are things that we come at from an academic viewpoint and how to teach both sides of the story as well. We definitely talk about those issues and in a safe environment, and we talk about the do’s and don’ts with some of these issues as well.”
Freshman Lenox Hancock said she enjoys her Ethnic Studies class, but finds the content somewhat repetitive and the projects stressful.
“It can be boring at times just because some of the stories are a little repetitive with similar narratives and themes of oppression,” Hancock said. “But at the same time, a lot of the grade is based on the projects we do, which can make it a little stressful. I wish there were some smaller assignments to help with that.”
Beyond the class itself, Trounce said he thinks the course should be optional, rather than a required graduation requirement.
“I think it should be voluntary because making it absolutely required is just a real bummer for people who actually want to learn world history,” Trounce said.
But sophomore Alegria Dorigo said she was glad to have the option to take the Ethnic Studies class as part of the pilot test study.
“I wanted something different from the usual history class,” Dorigo said. “I thought it would be more interesting and connect more to real life.”
Ultimately, Paramesh said he is looking forward to the Ethnic Studies community growing.
Paramesh said, “All of us (are) connected through this program we enjoy, and it will be continued for everyone in years to come.”
