JUNE 2023

Natick Needs a More Inclusive History Education

Ella Stern, EIC

Throughout my years in the Natick Public Schools, I have learned about the American Revolution in at least four separate history classes. Granted, the American Revolution was incredibly influential on our nation. However, in how many history classes did I learn about slavery? Two. The Japanese internment camps? One. The rise of Islamophobia after 9/11? One. The queer rights movement? One, briefly. The history of Latinos in America, such as the protests carried about by César Chavez? None. The disability rights movement? None.

I love history, so I believe in its power. I believe that history repeats itself if it’s not taught. I believe that some truly terrifying moments in history are beginning to repeat themselves already. And I believe that Natick must continue to diversify its history curriculum so that all students feel safe and respected, and so that historical tragedies faced by minority groups are less likely to resurface. 

There are many urgent needs for a history education that correctly represents marginalized groups. For instance, inclusive education increases visibility. Being represented and seen is important in helping students feel welcomed and safe in their school environment. For example, many young queer students are unsure about and/or ashamed of their identity because it has not been talked about in school at all, or not in a positive, welcoming way. “Growing up, I was desperate for images and information about LGBTQ people to figure out who I was. I wasn’t able to read a textbook or sit in a class and hear positive things that reflected all aspects of my identity – black, female, queer…Learning about those aspects of [identity] would have really helped the younger me,” Leslie K. Morrow, the director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center at the University of Illinois, said, advocating for the need for an inclusive education in an Illinois News Bureau article.  

An increase in visibility is also important for students who are not part of the marginalized group that is being represented. Learning facts about both the suffering and the triumphs of other groups increases students’ empathy and ability to engage maturely with issues of identity, counteracts the stereotypes and misinformation that feed prejudice towards marginalized groups, and normalizes difference. 

In addition to representation, the facts presented about the history of marginalized groups have other important consequences. For one, much discourse about marginalized groups focuses on their struggles—often on their deaths. As I will get to, it is crucial not to erase this suffering, but it is also important to focus on the joy and accomplishments of marginalized groups, teaching students to be proud of their culture and the successes it has achieved. 

This representation and the cultural pride it instills help increase students’ future success. For example, in February 2010, the San Francisco Unified School District started an ethnic studies program for incoming high school freshmen whose GPA was below 2.0. Students who participated in the program earned up to six more class credits than those who didn’t, leading the district to provide an ethnic studies elective across all public high schools in 2014. Furthermore, a Teach for America article highlights students whose ethnic studies classes helped and inspired them so much that they became history teachers to pay it back to the next generation. These outcomes are especially important because, as the article says, “For Black and Indigenous students and other students of color, a lack of representation—and misrepresentation—in curricula and lessons can be hurtful and even traumatic, and make learning much more challenging.”

In addition to learning about the accomplishments and joy of marginalized groups, it is also more than necessary to learn about the struggles various groups have faced throughout history. I strongly believe that when we don’t teach the horrors of the past, they are erased, and begin to repeat themselves. As the Holocaust is being denied around the country and the world, other genocides, such as that against Uyghur Muslims in China, are being committed right under our noses, to a global audience mostly made up of inaction and indifference. With more teaching about past and current tragedies, more students will likely be moved to help fight against oppression and injustice in the world today. 

In an article for the Oxford Education Blog, Claire Holliss, the Head of History and Classical Civilization at Reigate College in Surrey, details how her department has transitioned to a more inclusive education through routine representation and deep representation. Routine representation refers to including diverse perspectives in already-established history topics. For instance, instead of touting a colonialist mindset in her unit on the British empire, Holliss’s curriculum includes the people and groups who opposed British imperialism. This “allows us to give our students a much richer sense of what was possible in the world of the past and therefore to represent it more fully,” Holliss writes. Rather than distracting students from the topics they need to learn for standardized testing, as some argue inclusive education does, learning diverse perspectives gives students a deeper look into issues and allows them to make more fully-formed arguments about historical events. 

Deep representation, on the other hand, is teaching new units or classes that focus solely on the history of certain marginalized groups. These can still be in the context of previously covered historical events or time periods, but through the lens of a marginalized community. For example, Holliss’s department teaches about how the late 19th and 20th centuries changed the positions of women, queer people, and Black people in Britain. The aim of these units and classes can be to provide a different lens to other events covered in the curriculum and/or to allow interested students to deep dive into the history and perspective of a certain group. 

Natick Public Schools (NPS) has begun to incorporate both of these strategies, and it must continue to do so. 

Massachusetts schools’ curricula have to follow the standards set by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). In Natick, the central administration, superintendent, principals, and directors of social studies work together to turn these standards into specific K-12 curricula. These curricula are reevaluated periodically. 

The most recent reevaluation started a year or two before the Covid-19 pandemic, which temporarily upended it. This reevaluation had begun to develop a social justice mission, which was later revamped by the nationwide trend towards social justice that grew around George Floyd’s murder. 

As part of this social justice-driven reevaluation, NPS has diversified reading lists in English classes, topics in core social studies classes, and the social studies electives that they offer. Talking about issues of justice across multiple disciplines is necessary because it is “part of being a citizen and a member of a community,” said Matthew Brenneman, Natick High School (NHS)’s Social Studies Department Head. In our core Social Studies classes, Global Awareness is working on including more human rights issues and connecting to more modern political and societal ideas, Civics is aiming to discuss how the liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights apply across different groups, and U.S. History is setting a goal of highlighting civil rights issues throughout their curriculum. As for specific electives, Social Justice in America, which covers current civil rights and social justice issues, will be offered at NHS for the third year in a row in 2023–2024. Some other electives, such as a Native American history class and a joint English and Social Studies class on American identities, have been proposed but unfortunately have not garnered enough student interest. Still other necessary classes have yet to even be proposed.   

When implementing new electives, in addition to getting enough student interest, NHS must ensure that they have enough teachers and classrooms to offer all the desired classes. They have considered offering some inclusive history electives every other year (rather than every year) in order to logistically be able to cover a variety of minority groups. In my opinion, this is a necessary step, and the school also must ensure that the teachers of these electives—especially those who are not part of the group about whom they are teaching—are trained on how best to engage with the issues about which they are teaching and to understand the various intersectional identities and backgrounds of the students in their classes. 

Students who are starting to go through the Natick Public Schools right now are getting a more inclusive and social justice-focused education than we as current high school students were able to enjoy at their age. For instance, the fourth-grade wax museum project has been replaced by a social justice project; Mr. Brenneman’s fourth-grade son is doing a project on the inclusion of people with disabilities. 

However, NPS’s admirable efforts to expand inclusive education are still not enough. 

Mr. Brenneman, who also believes in the importance of an inclusive education, said that talking about the history of marginalized groups is “a conversation that [he thinks] we will forever have to continue to have…We would be naïve to say we’re doing it often enough and that it’s a big enough piece of our curriculum.” For instance, the diverse history electives that are offered still do not cover nearly enough groups. There are still no Social Studies electives that specifically cover Asian people, Latino people, queer people, or people with disabilities. Further, it is imperative that the history of marginalized groups is integrated into our core Social Studies classes. It is still incredibly important to offer a chance to learn deeply about various groups through electives, but students should not need to take a separate elective to hear themself represented or to get the full picture. Our history is not just made up of straight, cis, white, able-bodied men, and our Social Studies classes cannot portray only a fraction of the story. 

I want to make it clear that this article is not calling out individual teachers, who are simply presenting the curriculum given to them. Instead, it is time for our curriculum to continue to diversify until it does not ignore a single student of color, LBGTQ+ student, student with disabilities, or any other child who does not get the courtesy of their background being represented and respected by the history curriculum. Our district has the power to help all students feel welcome and to fight back against the erasure and repetition of historical terrors against marginalized groups. Natick Public Schools, we can be part of the solution.