A Curriculum Called ‘Voices’ That Wouldn’t Hear Ours
San Francisco doubled a mandatory ethnic studies course that perpetuates the model minority myth, told parents the textbook was copyrighted, and pushed it through on a consent calendar. I’ve spent years fighting anti-Asian hate. This is what it looks like in our schools.
TL;DR
SFUSD quietly doubled its ethnic studies mandate, adopted a contested “Liberated” curriculum parents weren’t allowed to read, and funded it with money voters restricted to arts and enrichment, all while the state’s own version of the requirement isn’t even in effect. A lawsuit now argues the district hid the vote, blocked public review, and misused restricted funds to push through a course that recasts Asian American success as complicity in whiteness.
To read the curriculum that San Francisco will now require every ninth grader in the city to complete, a parent last spring had to do this: call the district, book an appointment during working hours, travel to a district office, and examine the pages under supervision, because the materials could not be taken home, copied, or posted online. The district claimed that these materials were copyrighted. As a consequence, a mother who came to America for her child’s sake had to request permission to read what the state would teach him about who she is.
That is not an accident of bureaucracy. A public institution that is proud of its work does not need to hide it. When it conceals documents, schedules debate in the fine print, and pays for it out of a fund the voters walled off, it is telling us that it is unwilling to listen to our objections.
I have spent years of my life fighting anti-Asian hate. Grandpa Vicha, eighty-four, was killed on his morning walk. Elders in this city learned to cross the street when they saw a stranger coming. I did the concrete, unglamorous work of insisting that the harms inflicted on our community be recognized and prevented. But what San Francisco Unified did to Asian American families with this curriculum was not a street assault. It is something quieter and, in its way, more insulting. It is the state taking our children, telling them their success is a species of guilt, and refusing to let parents into the room to argue.
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