Pillar 4: Revise Your Curriculum
The first institution of higher learning in the United States was Harvard College in 1636, and according to Roger L. Geiger, “the Puritan leaders intended to provide education comparable to that of Oxford and Cambridge” (1). These leaders even went as far as to rename the town of Newtown, where Harvard was to be located, to Cambridge. Furthermore, Geiger notes that the college’s original curriculum included “philosophy (logic, ethics, and politics), the classical languages and literature, and other subjects suitable for a gentleman’s education in the arts . . . Latin was the language of instruction and communication, so that students had to be able to read, write, and speak it as a condition for admission” (2). And even though Latin is rarely taught in colleges and universities today, these institutions, whether two-year or four-year, private or public, non-profit or for-profit, still adhere to the liberal arts education that was adopted from Britain for use in America. This broad-based education privileges Greek and Roman epistemology, from philosophy to literature to rhetoric. Furthermore, this curricular focus permeates our students’ educations from kindergarten all the way up to graduate school and informs how we understand and study every discipline from business to biology to literature. In other words, our disciplines are informed by a Eurocentric pedagogy and curricula.
Students who do not belong to the dominant groups often walk into these classrooms and learn little to nothing about their ancestors’ and forefathers/mothers’ contributions to these disciplines (this is compounded by the fact that, statistically, their teachers are most likely to be White). This sends the message that these students’ lived experiences and histories don’t belong in academia, and as a result, they could feel like they don’t belong.
This is not to say that this lack of representation is entirely the fault of the classroom faculty. Our textbooks promote the same history and bias that our curricula often do. Outside the mainstream celebration of Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Abigail Adams, at best, the arc of U.S. history, thinking, and innovation is being portrayed as the accomplishments of exclusively White men.
In fact, it is entirely possible for a minoritized student to go through an entire semester, maybe even an entire year (maybe even an entire degree!), without learning about the accomplishments of African Americans, Latinx people, Asian Americans, Indigenous people, Muslims, members of the LGBTQ+ community, disabled people, veterans, women, or immigrants from countries outside Europe, or their contributions to this country’s history (and world history), and to its systems of education, economics, technology, and politics. It is entirely possible that this student may never have an instructor that mirrors his or her identity.
Recently, I visited a local high school to discuss an academic program at my college designed for African and African American students. I asked the students, all African American seniors, how often they were the only, or one of the few, black kids in class. Every hand went up. I then asked them how many African American teachers they had in their four years at their high school. The answer was a resounding zero. And this is certainly the case for other minoritized students.
These realities can have two very detrimental consequences, both of which often lead to dropping out of school entirely. First, these circumstances can cause students to disengage from the class. Every day, students encounter stigmas associated with their identities (race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc.), whether it is in the classroom, at work, in public spaces, or in the media. If students don’t see a positive image of themselves in their classes, school will not become a place of thinking and learning. Instead, it becomes a place that perpetuates what they are seeing and experiencing off campus.
Second, a Eurocentric curriculum can be very hostile to those who don’t fit into the dominant discourse. This is bound to be the case for any student who isn’t White, straight, native-born, and Christian. I’ve become privy to this in my own life. My daughter, who is a mix of many different ethnicities, has a pretty substantial amount of indigenous American DNA. For the past two years (she’s in first grade), she has had to learn about Christopher Columbus. Of course, at such a young age, she only gets the narrative about the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, but later, she will learn the truths about Columbus’s enslavement and subsequent genocide of indigenous peoples. As a result, she will have to reconcile the fact that Columbus was celebrated for much of her life when in fact, he was the embodiment of everything that was wrong with European colonialism. It is obviously important that we discuss the atrocities of colonialism. I am by no means advocating for the elimination of Columbus from the curriculum; we need to learn from our past. I am, however, arguing that we should not celebrate these types of people just to expose their evils later on. In other words, my daughter should not learn about Columbus until she is old enough to understand the entire history and legacy of this man.
So what does this Columbus example mean for those of us teaching in higher education? We aren’t the ones teaching our students about ship names. In fact, we are often the ones who expose Columbus for who he really is. But this story does have implications for how we talk about the Vietnam Conflict, how we teach “standard English,” or even how we portray marriage and the assumption that husbands and wives are of the opposite sexes. We need to recognize that we have students in our classes that are Vietnamese, veterans, English language learners, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. How we represent these topics will determine whether we have created a hostile learning environment for these students. And the list of potentially hostile topics goes on: the Linnaean system of taxonomy (which was created to promote racism); Manifest Destiny (and the genocide of indigenous peoples); Hawaii’s statehood (and the colonization of native Hawaiians); the causes of the Civil War (it was about slavery, not the economy or state’s rights); the United States in World War II (and the existence of Japanese Internment Camps). Each of these topics might be celebrated, but underneath is an entire history of oppression and sometimes violence that often isn’t discussed. It can be interpreted as a tacit endorsement by some of our students.
Furthermore, we need to celebrate the accomplishments of our students’ ancestors and forefathers/mothers. If we want our system of higher education to be the bastion of hope and higher learning that we strive for, we need our students to be empowered and engaged. One simple way to do so is to celebrate the accomplishments of those who share their identities. And our students need to learn about more people and events than the already tokenized curricula that include MLK, Cesar Chavez, and Rosa Parks. These people are important. But we need to also remember that our students have been learning about these folks for over a decade of their lives. As academics, we need to dig deeper. We need to teach about the folks who contributed to our disciplines: Benjamin Banneker (geography); Harvey Milk (political science); Dolores Huerta (social justice); George Washington Carver (botany); William Liedesdorf (business); Mary T. Washington (accounting); Ahmed Zewail (chemistry). The list goes on. And the point is that with a little research, we can create an inclusive curriculum that represents the students in our classrooms.
So how do we go about creating that curriculum? Though the answer will vary from discipline to discipline, there are some common strategies that educators can utilize to create more inclusive curricula.
The easiest step you can take is adjusting your readings. Include authors on your syllabus that reflect your students. As a literature professor, I would do my students a disservice if I didn’t include authors from the Harlem Renaissance in my American literature classes. And, yes, we often have to choose books before we step foot in our class on the first day, but the school’s demographics are usually easily accessible (if they are not available online, ask your institutional researcher or administrator). I have found that educators who use readings that reflect the student body start to build a reputation, and students will seek out these classes during registration.
Similarly, make sure you celebrate the achievements of non-hegemonic groups within your discipline. Teach all your students about the accomplishments of women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, religious minorities, immigrants (not just European), people with disabilities, and all the other people who come from other minoritized communities.
Be genuine when you do discuss these individuals. Students can tell when educators are “tokenizing” these individuals, which means we can’t teach about these folks just to check a box.
Know your facts. If you are going to teach about Harvey Milk, for example, make sure you not only know about him, but that you also understand the impossible odds he faced in his life and the contributions he made to politics. If you aren’t knowledgeable about the folks on the margins of your discipline, your students will notice.
Recognize that the underrepresented individuals you are including in your curricula faced seemingly insurmountable odds in their lives, educations, and careers and that your students who come from a similar background face similar challenges (this creates a valuable opportunity to motivate these students and to show them what’s possible). We can’t just celebrate Barack Obama for being the first African American president. We have to recognize, and discuss in class, the immense challenges Obama faced in his journey to the White House, which requires familiarity with his childhood, family, education, and career. If you are going to celebrate Obama in class for becoming the fist African American president, the students must also know that black men in America face constant discrimination, racism, and microaggressions on a daily basis, and that Barack Obama had to navigate these obstacles throughout his life (and during his presidency). This may seem tedious and time consuming, but it simply requires a bit of research – research in one’s discipline. This is a great opportunity to engage in the discipline that you were so passionate about as a student that you decided to pursue a career in its scholarship.
Curriculum, however, is just one side of the coin, and a classroom that acknowledges the achievements of non-hegemonic groups can still be inequitable. The other side, then, is pedagogy, or how we teach. This topic is much more complex than being representative in your lessons. In fact, it would take an entire book to discuss this topic (I have some of them listed on my Resources page). Instead, I want to share information about two schools of teaching with the hopes that you will investigate further and perhaps take small steps in adjusting your teaching methodologies.
Reality pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that focuses on the unique needs of every individual student. Practitioners find ways to “meet the students where they are” academically, culturally, economically, and emotionally. An important aspect of reality pedagogy is the co-creation of the learning space where students become the experts on course material and the teacher a learner. Of course, this requires a curriculum that speaks to the lived realities and experiences of students, which can be a fine line to balance. But several resources exist that help educators do just this, the most important being Chris Emdin’s For White Folks who Teach in the Hood: and the rest of y’all too.
Culturally relevant pedagogy (also known as culturally responsive pedagogy) is an approach to teaching and learning that focuses on representation in the course curriculum. In other words, practitioners intentionally and deliberately create lesson plans and curricula that are inclusive of all the students in the classroom. This can be as simple as choosing authors for course texts that reflect the students or as complex as developing teaching techniques that cater to the students’ different learning styles and interests. One of the leading practitioners and theorists for this pedagogy is Gloria Ladson-Billings. A few of her articles can be found on the Resources page.
Reality pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy are different paths to the same goal: creating an engaging and vibrant learning environment for every single student in the classroom. The difference is that one focuses on the cultural demographics of the class and one on the individual needs of the students. But these approaches are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I would argue that the best educators draw upon both approaches.
Again, this is a long process. I have undertaken this process for over four years, and I still have a lot of work to do on my curricula and my pedagogy. However, it is a rewarding process that pays dividends. There is nothing better than seeing all your students engaging in the course material and allowing yourself to learn from the students. And while there is a wealth of research and writing on these pedagogies, it is important to realize that the students at your college are unique from other institutions. It is imperative that you also find mentors and allies at your college who can help you adapt to your students’ needs.