Chicago public schools won’t share new African studies curriculum

CHICAGO – On Friday, the NAACP touted the decision by the Chicago Public School (CPS) to integrate “African American history in the curriculum” on Twitter.
But there is much more to the story. It is one thing to ignore the many contributions black Americans have made in America’s culture, but this curriculum change does not seem to be about that.

Earlier this month, a press release from CPS “announced the inclusion of a new interdisciplinary African and African-American studies program across all core disciplines and in all schools and starting in January 2014.”

All disciplines truly means “all disciplines,” and even includes “Physical Education and Health.”

 If one enlarges the image on the ninth page, some links can be viewed:

Some of these links are quite revealing.
In the first one, for example, one can find the following phrase buried in the text:
“Students need to have an understanding of the emergence of racism and why European science was used to justify slavery and imperialism.”

This phrase implies that only Europeans can be racist. Now remember, this is just an example of the curriculum for sixth graders.

Another link for “quarter 3″ discusses the “Multiple Trajectories of Islam in Africa.” There may be a Christian equivalent, but it it hard to determine, since the curriculum is not available to the public.

According to the description, students will learn,

“The study of intellectual thought of the Muslims and their effect on Christianity, on Africa, and subsequently Africa and Islam on Europe.”

Yet another link takes one to Professor Martin Bernal’s documentary, “Black Athena – The Fabrication of Ancient Greece.” The claims made in that particular documentary are typically coupled with the word “controversial.” The entire work was criticized in a book by History Prof. Ronald Fritze.

According to StrideMagazine, it was described by Fritze as
“an academic work using pseudohistory to assert the Afrocentric origins of Western Classical civilisation, a trendy toxic cocktail of race, ‘culture’ and Occidentalist propaganda.”

It would be interesting to see the rest of the curriculum.

One thing that keeps nagging at the author is the conspicuous lack of other groups that are notincorporated into PhysEd and all other core studies.

Additionally, how about the vast differences in cultures among Europeans? Italy, England, Ireland, Germany — these are all different groups with vastly different cultures. Why are “white people” all lumped in together? Why not Hispanic and Asian studies?