Ethnic Studies, Integration Into K–12 Curriculum

Many contemporary educators may assume that the incorporation of ethnic content into the K–12 curriculum began in the 1960s as a consequence of the civil rights movement. While there was a strong impetus to integrate ethnic content into the school curriculum during the 1960s, efforts to establish an ethnically diverse curriculum began in the first decades of the 20th century. Historians such as George Washington Williams, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Carter G. Woodson, and psychologist George Sanchez realized much earlier that the U.S. public school curriculum did not accurately present ethnic and cultural diversity in the nation. Woodson and colleagues had established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and in 1926 Woodson began Negro History Week, which eventually evolved ...