THE SRV EXPOSITOR
"The past and the present are within my field of inquiry." — Sherlock Holmes,
in The Hound of the Baskervilles
"ETHNIC STUDIES"
In May 2025, SRVUSD's School Board, on a 4 to 1 vote, adopted "Introduction to Ethnic Studies" as a new course for 9th graders. SRVUSD now requires that course — even though, without funding provided for it by the state, California doesn't itself require the course now. But SRVUSD has had some version of "Ethnic Studies" thrown at students since at least 2021's Marxist "My Story, Your Story, Hxrstory" course, and the District's radicals are determined to go ahead now with this latest monstrosity.
From the dictionary: “ethnic” as an adjective means “of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background.” As a noun, the term “ethnic” refers to a member of a group that is defined as above. Instead, SRVUSD has turned this program into a catch-all, captive-audience DEI course in grievance and protest studies.
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For a detailed criticism of that curriculum, lesson by lesson, see An Analysis of SRVUSD’s “Introduction to Ethnic Studies” Course. (Note: this is a large PDF file; it may download best on a desktop or laptop unit.)
As a petition signed by over 2500 people opposed to the raised-fist radicalism of this course reported: the curriculum "centers on oppression, resistance, and identity politics, ignoring alternative narratives, civic virtues, or immigrant success stories." It "frames the U.S. as a system of oppression, with students taught to 'challenge dominant narratives' and 'name systems of oppression' while being denied the opportunity to critique or examine these frameworks from other perspectives."
Two versions of what has been called an "Identity Wheel" have been shown in the course. The first one was condemned by an eloquent speaker at April 22nd 2025's SRVUSD Board meeting.
The second version appeared to have taken the place of the first version by the time of the May 14 follow-up Board meeting. Both versions illustrate SRVUSD's warped, politicized idea of what they call "Ethnic Studies."
Understand that “Ethnic Studies” is a decades-old project of the Academic Left, made tentatively mandatory for California school systems in 2021 (pending funding) by the Legislative Left. Individual school districts are not obliged, however, to adopt either the “model curriculum” or the philosophic intent and direction of the California Department of Education and its contributing agitators in creating and posting that curriculum.
See also: "How Cultural Marxism Threatens the United States—and How Americans Can Fight It."
and What's wrong with Ethnic Studies programs in general.
Meanwhile: SRVUSD and its personnel do have an affirmative moral and ethical obligation — and a self-stipulated textual responsibility and commitment as well, under Board Policy #6144 — to “ensure that all sides of a controversial issue are impartially presented, with adequate and appropriate factual information,” and to avoid promoting “any partisan point of view.”
SRVUSD’s curriculum designers have ignored those requirements. Meanwhile, the administrators who oversaw, endorsed, and presented this course’s design and contents (Curriculum Director Debra Petish and Equity Director Hong Nguyen) have denied creating division or assigning labels to individuals or individual groups, and “made clear from the very get-go" that “oppressed versus oppressor” lessons were not the SRVUSD model desired.
Yet variations of the word "oppress" appear 76 times — and the terms (labels) “supremacy” or “whiteness 19 times — in the course outline, before even linking into the approximately 290 external “resources.”
So this course fails utterly in its claimed aspects, despite its development over four years in various iterations. After that lengthy run-up, the published version of the course (with nearly 290 linked external “resources”) was tentatively approved on April 22 after being sprung on the public just 35 days earlier. Three of the course's six "Guiding Principles" show that it's just a warmed-over version of DEI propaganda. And instead of "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion," it's really about Division, Exclusion, and Indoctrination:
The administrators also said that the course “follows the California Department of Education’s History-Social Science Content Standards for California Public Schools, ensuring curriculum alignment with educational expectations. These standards provide the foundation for essential standards that frame the course, offering a rigorous, historically grounded, and culturally responsive learning experience.”
But in fact, they have largely ignored those standards too — such standards as this one, for example: “Students explain the fundamental principles and moral values of American democracy as expressed in the U.S. Constitution and other essential documents of American democracy.”
A few alterations and additions were suddenly announced just 4 days prior to intended course adoption, as a Mother’s Day weekend began, without the precise wording of those changes being posted.
Were all these problems not so serious, they would be comical. The false denials of the course’s “oppressed versus oppressor" modality alone are reminiscent of the stark unreality of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” — or the Monty Python “Dead Parrot Sketch”:
Pet store proprietor: “What’s wrong with it?”
Customer, returning a purchased parrot: “It’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it.”
Proprietor: “No, no, it’s uh, just resting….”
Customer: “I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now….”
Rational, objective reviewers of this course know a heavily biased curriculum when they see one, and they’ve been looking at one if they clicked on the “Version Date 3/25” curriculum" linked at top of this page.
For a detailed criticism of that curriculum, lesson by lesson, see An Analysis of SRVUSD’s “Introduction to Ethnic Studies” Course. (Note: this is a large PDF file; it may download best on a desktop or laptop unit.) One of the reasons for SRVUSD's slight alterations of the course is the implicit antisemitism that was built into it.
SRVUSD governance is driven extensively by its SRVEA teacher union. CTA, the state organization of which SRVEA is a chapter member, has itself drawn July, 2025 condemnation of JPAC (the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California) for its opposition to Assembly Bill 715, noting that the bill "Instead of offering real solutions," the bill's sponsors "propose vague, universalist 'restorative practices' and trainings to 'create safe spaces' – wholly inadequate responses to the dangerous reality of antisemitism in schools."
RIDICULOUSLY BIASED PREDECESSOR COURSE
The current "Ethnic Studies" course follows on the heels of SRVUSD's ludicrous "My Story, Your Story, Hxrstory" course. That course has been exposed and ridiculed nationally. Key sections of the curriculum were posted by Parents Defending Education and summarized in a separate online article.
These postings reveal the radical outlooks which typify SRVUSD and its staff personnel. Caring, attentive parents with sufficient resources of time and/or money will do their best to seek to have their children home-schooled or educated privately. Parents without such means should do their best at home to counteract SRVUSD's determined, heavy-duty indoctrination. Public education here is a toxic wasteland.
The Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies has been fighting the heavily biased "Liberatory" (Leftist, Antisemitic) version of this course. Such warped, deadly biases as those didn't end with the Nazis and World War II. And today's reiteration of such diseased thinking and behavior was foreshadowed and condemned as "The Socialism of Fools" by Seymour Martin Lipset in January, 1971 in the New York Times.