Thread by @JeffreyASachs

This WSJ editorial on California's Ethnic Studies curriculum is incredibly misleading. I'll explain why in a moment, but first I want to really drive home the torrent of bullshit that critics are directing against the ESMC.

This one is going to be long.

wsj.com/articles/calif…

First, a bit of context. What's being debated right now is the 3rd and final draft of the ESMC. Most of it is boilerplate edu-bureaucrat-ese: This is what ethnic studies is, this is why it's important, this is how we might implement it, etc.

cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/esmct…

The firestorm is all over the contents of Appendix A. That's where you'll find 43 sample lesson plans that schools can adopt to satisfy the ethnic studies requirement. I want to stress that they're just samples. Individual schools are permitted to ignore them if they wish.

Anyway, critics of the 3rd draft are losing their ever-loving minds. It's a bipartisan affair. E.g. the very leftwing authors of the original draft are calling the new version a betrayal, accusing it of "giving credence" to a biological view of race.

savearabamericanstudies.org/where-we-are/

That is a lie. I want to be clear about that. They are lying to you. In reality, the only place in the 3rd draft that discusses a biological basis of race is in a footnote in the Preface, where the theory is mentioned *purely in order to reject it*.

Like I said, a lie.

Or take this piece in Mondoweiss, where a teacher claims that the sample lessons on Asian Pacific Islanders, present in the first draft, were removed in the 3rd. The idea, one supposes, is to mobilize that group against the ESMC.

mondoweiss.net/2021/02/save-a…

This is also a lie. The 3rd draft actually contains two lessons on Asian Pacific Islanders. Not only is that the same number of lessons as was in the 1st draft, but the two versions are extremely similar and in most salient respects are word-for-word identical.

Lies upon lies, coming in this case from leftwing academics who view the 3rd draft as a betrayal of the original's radical vision. Btw, that fact ought to tell you something about how moderate the 3rd draft really is.

sacbee.com/news/local/edu…

But for a real lesson on deception, we need to look rightward. The most egregious example was Emily Benedek's piece in Tablet. Most of her article is about the discarded 1st draft. About the 3rd draft, however, she makes only one substantive allegation:

tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

Inflammatory stuff! Except, as @schraubd patiently and painstakingly shows, Benedek is lying. That quote appears nowhere in any assigned or suggested resource. It's just not there. So how did Benedek get it? I'll let Schraub explain.

dsadevil.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-an…

Did you get that? It’s as if because the curriculum cites an article from the December 3, 1955 issue of the New York Times, it is therefore “including” every other article in that issue of the Times. Which is clearly nonsense, but this is how Benedek makes her case.

Schraub actually confronted Benedek about her little ruse. Not only did she double down, but her editor did as well. Read the entire exchange. It would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing.

https://twitter.com/MarkHorowitz/status/1356684578711363585

Other conservative critiques of the ESMC are just as fraught. Take this one from @PamelaParesky (who I like!) and Lee Jussim (who I don't!). Everything after the word "Inquisition" is either untrue or misleading.

jewishjournal.com/commentary/332…

In fact, the ESMC includes a whole section on anti-Jewish discrimination. Teachers are instructed to tell students about persecution in the Middle East and North Africa (Appendix A, p. 487) and are provided this reading on anti-Jewish violence in Iran.

blogs.timesofisrael.com/we-survived-kh…

It also provides multiple readings designed to help students identify and debunk anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, as well as descriptions of anti-Semitic violence in LA and on university campuses. It even has students compose an essay on how anti-Semitism can be combatted.

As for Holocaust, it's true the ESMC says little. But that's only because California law already requires that genocides be covered separately. The unit on Armenian Americans doesn't discuss the Armenian genocide for the same reason.

cde.ca.gov/ci/hs/im/docum…

Given all this, is it any surprise that so many Jewish organizations, including the ADL, AJC, Hadassah, and JIMENA, have all come out in favor of the ESMC?

jimena.org/jimena-stateme…

jta.org/2021/02/04/opi…

And don’t even get me started on Chris Rufo, the world's clumsiest con artist.

https://twitter.com/CathyYoung63/status/1370206112629284865

Hopefully by now I've made my point. So let's circle back to the WSJ editorial, which is as deceptive as all the rest. Does the ESMC, as the editorial alleges, include a worksheet on "the four I's"? Yes, but not the way you think.

The only place in the ESMC where the four i's appear is in a unit on El Salvador. That's it. And the only thing that the worksheet has students do is discuss oppression *in the context of the Salvadoran civil war and its aftermath* (Appendix A, 99-105). It's not controversial.

Even worse are these two claims. Neither quote appears in any course outline recommended by the ESMC. Rather, they appear in separate curricula used elsewhere in California and only appear in the ESMC per the request of the state assembly (Appendix C, pp. 333 & 61 respectively).

Lest there be any confusion: The law creating the ESMC requires the authors to list descriptions of Ethnic Studies courses offered in public and private schools throughout California. It's purely for comparative purposes and nothing from them appears in the actual sample courses.

Think about what had to happen here. The WSJ editors (or whatever, their research assistants) tried to find something damning in the model curricula. They failed. So instead, they went rooting around in an unrelated section, just to whip people up into a frenzy.

Do you see what I mean about deception and lies? And just look at how much work it takes to debunk them. Look at how much time it took you to read this thread. It's so tedious. Critics of the ESMC are counting on that. It's the only way their bullshit can fly.

The ESMC is not perfect. There really are things about the final draft I do not like. But that's okay! It's a solid, largely unremarkable curriculum that will probably do much less good than its supporters hope, much less harm than its detractors fear.

Boring stuff. But boredom isn't politically useful. Hence the bullshit.

HA! It's happening again. NRO came out with a piece this morning on the ESMC with this claim. Clearly you are meant to think that Jews are being dismissed as some afterthought. In reality, the lesson plans for EVERY group were moved to the Appendix.

nationalreview.com/2021/03/agains…

The rest is just cribbing from Chris Rufo's critique, ably debunked by others up thread. Pathetic stuff.

God, I feel so obnoxious right now. But what's the alternative? Just letting all these deceptions, big and small, just skate by? This must be how @jessesingal feels.

FYI, one good red flag on that NRO piece is that it never actually links to the ESMC. Crazy! Why wouldn't you give your readers the chance to check your work? Well, I teach students for a living. I know why.

Once again, here's that link.

cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/esmct…

Note this as well.

https://twitter.com/JeffreyASachs/status/1372597834927722500