Mary Cipperman ‘21 | Morgan Rees ‘21
Over the past months, EA has reexamined its curriculum in a critical way and revised its procedures in the new “Commitment to Building an Inclusive Community” policy. Although these changes may contribute to a more equitable, inclusive curriculum for students in the future, we propose weaknesses in the current policy and thus, in response, the implementation of a mandatory, semester-long course on American identity and culture.
Upon changes in the curriculum this past summer, T.J. Locke, Head of School, and the Board of Trustees gathered to examine alumni letters and increasingly popular social media accounts like @blackmainlinespeaks on Instagram to reflect on former student’s experiences and create new, inclusive policy. Locke explains, “We have been working towards this for a long time, but the one thing that weighed heavily was the amount of alumni letters. People sharing their different accounts of discrimation and injustice at EA really hit close to home.” With both the alumni letters and prominent social media accounts hoping to bring awareness and uplift the voices of the black community in the greater Philadelphia area, EA, at least in words, has started to reexamine its education around inclusivity. Kalil Oldham, history teacher and Upper School DEI Coordinator, characterizes 2020 as a moment of “intense focus” on systems of oppression.
This awareness has sparked dialogues among students as well, and many have identified inadequacies in the EA education for understanding race and identity issues. Veronica Garrubbo ‘21, class president of the senior class, speaks on her frustration, saying that “lower and middle schoolers, because they are younger and have less life experience, need things reiterated to them constantly in order for them to stick. I know we were educated a bit on the history of racism, but the very fact that I don’t actively remember learning about it speaks to the lack of emphasis placed on it.” Grace Frazier ‘21, adds, “As someone who had attended EA since Pre-K, I do believe that my race education, while not nonexistent, was limited to background information and proposed diluted narratives surrounding the true events of our history. In order to gain more perspective on race issues I had to seek out further education.”
Sentiment similar to that of EA students about inadequate race education has sparked a movement towards mandating inclusivity education across the nation. For example, students at The Ethical Culture Fieldston School, an elite predominantly white institution in Riverdale, New York, pressured administrators for systematic change after an incident of race-based hatred. Their “Students of Color Matter” group staged a lock-in protest in response to incidents of bigotry and racism from their student body. The achieved results: their school implemented sensitivity training and long-term curriculum alterations.
This year, EA has made several changes. The school implemented a new race and identity unit in freshman seminars and promised six advisory sessions for all Upper School students on race and inclusivity. Due to scheduling concerns, only one session has taken place thus far,
This is a step in the right direction, but the sessions fail to fulfill the promise of EA’s commitment towards building an inclusive community in two regards. First, they do not provide adequate time for learning; students have no homework, outside-of-class, or assessment-based reinforcement. Secondly, these initiatives are removed from an academic setting, in which students formulate their own opinions on complex and often difficult topics. In these formats, students are given baseline information, but don’t have opportunities to think critically, to question assumptions, and to develop deeply informed, analytical opinions. Undeniably, a few short seminar classes don’t provide the same depth of education and understanding as more lasting and permanent measures.
The Honors Identity and Culture in Modern U.S. History class is a step in the right direction for Episcopal, as making a year-long class like this mandatory undoubtedly allows for more depth than short seminar classes. However, as it is currently an elective, the course is only provided to a few students – students already committed to educating themselves on issues of race and identity. The class provides a broad and academically-rigorous overview of major issues in race, racism, and American culture. Its topics are necessary not only for understanding and engaging with the modern political climate, but also for introducing students to a baseline understanding of American culture. Familiarity with topics such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, the Great Migration, or the major events of the Civil Rights movement are all foundational to being a well-educated citizen. The class introduces students to the basics of civics, culture, and history in American society. These topics, though covered briefly in broad survey courses like United States History or American Literature, are often neglected to their full extent in the current curriculum. For example, students may read A Letter from Birmingham Jail in American Literature, but they don’t cross-analyze its contents with the Civil Rights movement of the sixties, the social contract theory, and the developing assimilationist race theory over the period from 1900 until 1950. In the modern political climate, these types of enduring understandings of nonviolent civil disobedience, as an example, are necessary both for contextualizing the political climate and preparing for increasingly pervasive collegiate-level dialogues around race.
On a more personal level, the course gives students the tools to understand their identity in modern American society and to build empathy for their peers and neighbors. The course simultaneously presents necessary knowledge and equips students to question, challenge, and analyze our modern context: it by no means preaches a specific political viewpoint or imposes a specific identity. The course merely supplies the historical context for modern political and social issues and allows students to come to their own opinions on complex and relevant issues. Its format reflects this: rather than take objective multiple choice, students reflect on course readings in weekly to biweekly response papers. Almost fifty percent of the graded coursework comes in the form of analytical papers–in which students examine bias, perspective, and context for each of the scholars in the class.
This is EA’s first academic course specifically focused on race and identity, and it clearly provides ample benefits for students. It simultaneously addresses EA’s concerns around race education and prepares students to be educated citizen-leaders in the United States.
For these reasons, Episcopal Academy must adapt this course to a mandatory format: a semester-long, for-credit academic course on American culture, personal identity, and basic civics. With the new, semester-based science curriculum implemented this year, an identity semester requirement is more feasible than ever. Episcopal Academy adapted to the modern world by implementing a computer science requirement; we should likewise respond to the modern world by implementing an identity, culture, and civics course, and we are confident that with educators like Kalil Oldham and Ayinde Tate dedicated to providing these opportunities to students, we could build a more equitable, inclusive, and safe community environment for our students.
In this way, EA can fulfill its “Commitment to Building an Inclusive Community” not in words and speech, but in truth and action.