The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that San Francisco high school students, starting in the ninth grade, can earn San Francisco State college credit in the fall by taking ethnic studies classes. The student does not get a letter or number grade. A student can simply receive a “pass” or may withdraw from the class if it looks as if he or she will fail. The Chronicle reports further:
To help with the added costs associated with expanding the program, San Francisco State offered to help train district teachers and assist with developing curriculum.
At a school board meeting last week, the head of the university’s Ethnic Studies program also promised that students would earn up to six college course credits for the high school freshman course - a rare opportunity for a 14-year-old.
The courses will become part of the California State University’s Step to College program, which has offered college credit for high school students across the state since 1985. Most of those courses require students to be juniors or seniors.
Doctor Jacob Perea, dean of the School of Education, who runs the Step to College program at San Francisco State explained that the program is designed for students who would not ordinarily consider college.:
“We’re not really looking for the 4.4 (grade point average) students,” he said. “We’re looking for the 2.1 or 2.2 students.”
Students cannot fail the class. They either receive a “pass” grade or are withdrawn from the course if it appears they cannot pass, Perea said.
“All we do is give them an opportunity,” he said. “I do believe that (the ethnic studies) course is a course set up so the kids will come out of there with the kind of information that a freshman here taking an ethnic studies course will have.”
Dr. Perea is a social justice activist who was named dean to the school’s social justice initiatives in 2008. In a press release he said,:
“While social justice is already extremely important to this University, we still have more to learn,” Perea said. “I will be consulting faculty and staff across the board and proposing a model that will institutionalize social justice on campus. The goal is that recognizing differences, and dealing with them without fear, becomes common practice at SF State.”
Not surprisingly, the college’s own ethnic studies department, which endorsed the college credit program for the high schoolers, have a number of college course descriptions that fall heavily into areas liberal political ideology.
San Francisco State University’s own College of Ethnic Studies is broken into Africana Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, and Raza Studies.
Course offerings at the college include:
- Raza Politics
- Raza and Community Organizing
- Educational Equity
- Political Economy and Raza
- Gender, Sexuality, and Latino Communities
- Filipinos in America, Problems of Transition
- Asian American Community Health Issues
- Psyche and Behavior of Filipinos
- American Indian Identity Politics
- American Indian Social Movements
- Power and Politics in American Indian History
- Ancestors or Data? The Politics of NAGPRA
- Malcolm X in the Context of Black Nationalism
- Black Religion
- Black Politics
- Mass Movements and Liberation Themes
The Washington Times reached out to Dr. Perea to find out if the college courses listed above could possibly become part of the high school curriculum in San Francisco school system. We are waiting to hear back from the dean. If ideological courses such as these are included in a high school curriculum that a student cannot fail but receive college credit for at the local university, one can only imagine what teachers in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D - CA) district could possibly want to impress upon these young students’ minds.
