From Governor Ned Lamont:
Governor Ned Lamont today announced that Connecticut has become the first state in the nation to require all high schools in the state offer courses on African-American, Black, Puerto Rican, and Latino studies.
The requirement is the result of a law Governor Lamont signed last year–Public Act 19-12–that directs all regional and local boards of education to include an elective course of studies at the high school level that provides students with a better understanding of the African-American, Black, Puerto Rican, and Latino contributions to United States history, society, economy, and culture. Last week, the Connecticut State Board of Education unanimously approved the curriculum for the course, which was a final step needed to implement the requirement.
High schools may offer the course in 2021-2022 and will be required to offer it during the school year that begins in the fall of 2022.
“Increasing the diversity of what we teach is critical to providing students with a better understanding of who we are as a society and where we are going,” Governor Lamont said. “Adding this course in our high schools will be an enormous benefit not only to our Black and Latino students, but to students of all backgrounds because everyone can benefit from these studies. This is a step that is long overdue, and I applaud the work of the General Assembly, State Board of Education, and everyone at the State Education Resource Center whose collaborative work helped get this done.”
“Identities matter, especially when 27 percent of our students identify as Hispanic or Latino and 13 percent identify as Black or African-American, Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona said. “This curriculum acknowledges that by connecting the story of people of color in the U.S. to the larger story of American history. The fact is that more inclusive, culturally relevant content in classrooms leads to greater student engagement and better outcomes for all. This law passed due in large part to the strong advocacy of students from around the state and the legislative leadership of State Representative Bobby Gibson and State Senator Doug McCrory. I thank Ingrid Canady, the SERC team, and all of our partners who contributed to and drove us to this historic moment.”
The adopted curriculum focuses on a two-pronged, inquiry-based approach, including both content knowledge and student identity development. It utilizes Connecticut’s Social Studies Framework themes and inquiry-based approach already familiar to social studies teachers to deliver a content rich and personalized learning experience. The Connecticut State Department of Education partnered with the State Education Resource Center (SERC) to develop the curriculum.
The development process was guided by a 150-member advisory group comprised of educators, administrators, higher education professors and scholars, national researchers and historians, representatives from education and community organizations, and studies and families. The group organized into nine committees with specific tasks. The work of each committee was facilitated by a SERC liaison to ensure seamless communication and workflow between committees.
Additionally, an expert review panel was convened, consisting of ten national and state-level experts to review course deliverables as they were developed and provide critical feedback and resources. Other opportunities for stakeholder involvement included providing feedback through surveys and focus groups.
“I am extremely proud of the passage of this bill,” State Senator Douglas McCrory (D-Hartford), co-chair of the Education Committee, said. “It was a humbling experience to hear students passionately call for the Black and Latino studies curriculum, and I thank them for it. Nelson Mandela once said, ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world’and I hope this new curriculum will facilitate a greater understanding and appreciation of the many contributions made by Black and Latino Americans.”
“I am excited to see implementation of this bipartisan legislation that will give students a more realistic view of their heritage and the many accomplishments of their ancestors,” State Representative Bobby Sanchez (D-New Britain) said. “This curriculum, which is a year-long study of Black and Latino history, will lead to better racial relations in our communities and a more inclusive state for our children and theirs. At public hearings, last year students explained how history classes didn’t reflect their heritage. Now, high schoolers will have that opportunity.”
“I am so proud of how the state came together to make this legislation I brought forth come to fruition,” State Representative Bobby Gibson (D-Bloomfield, Windsor) said. “This history is for everyone. Our nation is at a point where we must change the one-sided narrative of how we view history. Racism stems from the lack of knowledge and respect for one another. Perhaps if our children grew up knowing more about the amazing accomplishments of our people, the actions of this past summer would not have had to happen. We would be doing an injustice to our children if we didn’t do our part to help them to understand each other more.”
“SERC’s mission has always been about access and opportunity, and our team is proud to have been part of this moment affirming our students’ racial identity and ensuring it is at the forefront,” Ingrid Canady, executive director of SERC, said. “Our coordination of this endeavor involved an advisory group of racially diverse, passionate, and committed individuals from across Connecticut and we have made history together because we passionately believed it could be done. Even through challenges like the pandemic, the group never backed down because we knew that every single student in Connecticut needs to understand the history of people of color in the American story which has been denied by textbooks for too long.”
To learn more about the curriculum and the next steps for district implementation, visit pa1912.serc.co.
This is long over due in fact courses on African-American, Black, Puerto Rican, and Latino studies are needed to understand on what is going on in America right now with the social unrest this summer and America’s history with the right to vote and with vaccines.
Good overall education is also long overdue. So, do the families in these particular ethnicities teach their children about their heritage? I know in most “Latino” families they proudly teach their kids as much as they can about their backgrounds, including the good and the bad, the discrimination and harrassment and how they either progressed and moved up or down. My daughter grew up understanding both her Puerto Rican heritage and her Eastern European heritage. I suppose if youths don’t get that type of knowledge at home it is a good idea to have it “available” as an elective in school. My question is what exactly will that education do for them regarding what you mentioned above regarding today’s social unrest etc. and vaccines??
Rich, are you aware of this American history?
The Tuskegee Institute opened a polio center in 1941, funded by the March of Dimes. The center’s founding was the result of a new visibility of Black polio survivors and the growing political embarrassment around the policy of the Georgia Warm Springs polio rehabilitation center, which Franklin Roosevelt had founded in the 1920s before he became president and which had maintained a Whites-only policy of admission. This policy, reflecting the ubiquitous norm of race-segregated health facilities of the era, was also sustained by a persuasive scientific argument about polio itself: that Blacks were not susceptible to the disease.
After a decade of civil rights activism, this notion of polio as a White disease was challenged, and Black health professionals, emboldened by a new integrationist epidemiology, demanded that in polio, as in American medicine at large, health care should be provided regardless of race, color, or creed.
I’m aware of some of it not all. I could ask you the same question about my heritage etc. and how and why my people were enslaved, tortured, and killed but I don’t throw sticks into your wheelspokes as you constantly do to me and everyone else. You never seem to answer the questions.
Have a nice evening.
Rich, what do you know about The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American Male is the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history? How fast do you think blacks will rush to a COVID-19 vaccine ane believe the government?
You nipping again?!!!
Rich, were those two examples taught to you in school, never mind how many black families were destroy?
“Latino” when not speaking Spanish is an insult, they should probably begin with that…
So you feel that the teachers should all speak Spanish??
Coach T I feel a person shouldn’t describe a group of people by a word that has an English translation (Latino-Latin) in the native language unless you can and are speaking that language especially in situations were the intent is to Educate. This should worry everyone as our histories are most likely going to be taught based on books written by the oppressors and not the oppressed.
How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks
Gail Collins
June 21, 2012 issue
“What happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas when it comes to textbooks”
No matter where you live, if your children go to public schools, the textbooks they use were very possibly written under Texas influence. If they graduated with a reflexive suspicion of the concept of separation of church and state and an unexpected interest in the contributions of the National Rifle Association to American history, you know who to blame.
When it comes to meddling with school textbooks, Texas is both similar to other states and totally different. It’s hardly the only one that likes to fiddle around with the material its kids study in class. The difference is due to size—4.8 million textbook-reading schoolchildren as of 2011—and the peculiarities of its system of government, in which the State Board of Education is selected in elections that are practically devoid of voters, and wealthy donors can chip in unlimited amounts of money to help their favorites win.
Those favorites are not shrinking violets. In 2009, the nation watched in awe as the state board worked on approving a new science curriculum under the leadership of a chair who believed that “evolution is hooey.” In 2010, the subject was social studies and the teachers tasked with drawing up course guidelines were supposed to work in consultation with “experts” added on by the board, one of whom believed that the income tax was contrary to the word of God in the scriptures.
Ever since the 1960s, the selection of schoolbooks in Texas has been a target for the religious right, which worried that schoolchildren were being indoctrinated in godless secularism, and political conservatives who felt that their kids were being given way too much propaganda about the positive aspects of the federal government. Mel Gabler, an oil company clerk, and his wife, Norma, who began their textbook crusade at their kitchen table, were the leaders of the first wave. They brought their supporters to State Board of Education meetings, unrolling their “scroll of shame,” which listed objections they had to the content of the current reading material. At times, the scroll was fifty-four feet long. Products of the Texas school system have the Gablers to thank for the fact that at one point the New Deal was axed from the timeline of significant events in American history.
Here’s some black history that the whole world benefieted from.
In 1951, an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks discovered what she called a “knot” on her cervix that turned out to be a particularly virulent form of cervical cancer. The head of gynecology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who was studying cervical cancer at the time, had asked the head of tissue culture, George Gey, to develop a culture of both healthy and cancerous surgical cell tissue. As a result, Gey asked for tissue samples from all cervical cancer patients, including Henrietta Lacks. At the time, no human cells had ever survived long in a laboratory, but Henrietta’s cancer cells, which Gey labeled as HeLa, survived. Meanwhile, Henrietta underwent treatment for her cervical cancer but succumbed to the disease, leaving behind her five children and husband. The Lacks family had no idea that doctors had taken her cells or that some of her cells were still alive. When the doctors at Hopkins requested an autopsy, Henrietta’s husband Day hesitated, but relented at his cousin’s insistence when a doctor suggested that the information gleaned from the autopsy could someday help his children. It wasn’t until 1973, when a family friend who was a researcher mentioned that he did work on HeLa cells, that the family learned a part of Henrietta was still alive.
Gey’s culture of HeLa cells not only survived, but allowed scientists to conduct unprecedented research on disease and genetics, as well as develop new medical treatments and vaccines. At no charge, Gey gave samples of HeLa cells to any researcher who requested them. Over time, for-profit cell culture labs sprung up, mass-producing HeLa cells and other cell lines in order to more efficiently supply research labs. However, because HeLa cells were so hearty and grew so quickly, they had the potential to contaminate other cell cultures. In 1973, geneticists realized that if they could identify distinct genetic markers within HeLa cells, they could more easily identify which cultures had been contaminated. To that end, a geneticist at Hopkins asked Henrietta’s children to have blood samples taken. The doctors didn’t make sure that the Lacks children understood why they needed to have blood drawn, and Deborah, Henrietta’s daughter, believed that they were giving her a cancer screening.
Meanwhile, because HeLa cells and cell culturing promised so many advances in medicine, the media spread the story of the “immortal” cell culture and the mysterious woman behind the cells. Although a colleague of Gey’s published Henrietta’s real name in a small niche journal, most mainstream news outlets mistakenly gave her name as Helen Lane. In 1975, a journalist from Rolling Stone named Michael Rogers discovered Henrietta’s true name and contacted the Lacks family for an article about HeLa cells. The Lacks family was horrified to learn that other people were profiting from Henrietta’s cells.
Again, Henrietta Lacks was an African-American Baltimore cancer patient who died in 1951 not knowing her tumor cells (now known as HeLa cells) were harvested by Johns Hopkins Hospital researchers and later duplicated into “immortal” cell lines utilized by scientists for medical testing all over the world. (They remain in use to this day.)
A best-selling book chronicling Lacks’ life, the medical developments wrought by HeLA cells and ethical issues of consent (the cells were taken without Henrietta’s consent and the Lacks family has never been compensated for their mother’s contribution to science) was released in 2010 by science writer Rebecca Skloot.