Opinion
Changes to the English Curriculum: What Comes Next? This year, the BVN English curriculum underwent several changes — but is this really all we need to change? By Charitha Lakkireddy
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efore 2020, there were about 90 approved novels in Blue Valley’s English curriculum, and 11 were written by people of color. Of the 12 new novels approved to be added to the BV curriculum spring 2020, seven of them are written by people of color. Blue Valley has retired “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, “Of Mice and Men” and both “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain from the curriculum. The retirement of books was decided by the Blue Valley School District diversity committee as a response to recent events this summer. The addition of books comes after years of teachers’ campaigns for new novels to be added.
The hope that simply reading more books about the minority experience will evoke a culture of anti-racism is hoping for too much. I’ve been in those classes and I’ve read those books with non-Black students who mouthed the N-word when it came up in the text, who said it casually in conversation, for whom the book was just a book, a read-aloud that killed class time and ate into their free time. We are allowing for these situations to happen because we don’t truly talk about what we read. We talk about how unfortunate it is that this character experienced discrimination and the cause of their distress. We don’t discuss the root of these issues — the system that allows them to happen.
This is a great thing to do, but this can’t be the only thing that’s done. Racism is an issue everywhere. No place in the world is exempt, BVN included. There are a few improvements we are trying to make now, including featuring more authors of color in the English curriculum and more honest history of the people of color in history courses. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s an excellent first step — as long as it isn’t the final step. These changes would help give different perspectives, which help others understand the lived experiences of people of color in America. This is important, but it’s not the end-all, be-all solution to the long list of problems pertaining to race in this country.
We talk about racism with blinders on. Yes, racism is an issue, and it’s good we can settle that, but we need to take the blinders off and look with our peripheral vision. We need to connect the issues presented in the book with the present, what we can do to combat them, and give students the space to share personal experiences and ask questions retaining to the text and life. When we fail to talk candidly about race, we also fail to speak to the true experiences of people of color. Instead of seeing all aspects of the lives of the character, we focus on the ugly — the downfalls and hardships — not the beauty.
28 | The North Star | October 2020
The 90 books in the ELA curriculum
