New York City public schools will utilize a new Black Studies curriculum this fall, spanning pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
The coursework was created by Columbia University Teachers College’s Black Education Research Center. The curriculum was funded by the New York City Council, known as the Education Equity Action Plan (EEAP).
The curriculum, which was already implemented in a portion of the city’s schools, will be available to all schools this month as students return to class.
“This is not a curriculum about a particular racial group, necessarily, but about the history of inequality and stratification hierarchy in the United States,” Sonya Douglass, a professor of Education Leadership at Columbia University’s Teachers College, told ABC News.
“When young people, as well as teachers, who may have not even had access to this content in their own training and education are grounded in that history and grounded in perspectives that may be different than their own, I think it helps us to better understand the challenges that we’re facing currently as a society,” Douglass added.
The new coursework will aid the existing school program, offering a range of additional units, activities, reading lists and lesson plans.
New York City’s utilization of the new curriculum comes as other states, like Oklahoma and Texas, have looked to remove books in school libraries. The proponents of those efforts have said that certain materials in regard to gender and race could bring students shame.
“We’re in the midst of a struggle over the minds of our children and how we choose to socialize them into American society,” Douglass told ABC News. “So, I see all of this is very much connected in terms of some states who want to limit the teaching of the truth, and others that want to create a more accurate and expansive accounting of our history and contribution.”
