Does your school celebrate Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Women's History Month? If so, scheduling performers and speakers for the assemblies, finding volunteers to score the student essays, and planning the special menus for the cafeteria probably take every minute you can squeeze out of your already overloaded schedule. But to make these efforts worthwhile, we need to take the time to evaluate the impact of these events.
If our goal is to entertain students, then an enthusiastic response to the assemblies will signify success. If our goal is to meet a district requirement, then we simply have to host a sufficient number of events. But if our goal is to challenge stereotypes—creating an inclusive curriculum and addressing institutional racism—then we need to reexamine our overall plan.
Ironically, typical heritage month programs may do as much to reinforce stereotypes as they do to challenge them. For example, what do students learn if the Hispanic Heritage Month events consist of a dance performance assembly and tacos for lunch? Try asking students at your school what they have learned from the activities. Don't be surprised if they tell you that "Latinos like to dance and eat." The heritage month events have simply reinforced a stereotype that students have already learned from television.
What do students learn if every year they have to write a report on the same few African Americans? They will learn forever the names of Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass, and Rosa Parks. But they are also probably left to assume that these black men and women must be exceptions.
A Revised Approach
I'm not suggesting that we do away with heritage celebrations. It is important to devote special attention to previously —alized histories. However, special events in isolation can reinforce stereotypes. Instead, we can challenge ourselves to go deeper. In the same way that educational reform has recognized the benefit of instruction that is holistic and interdisciplinary, a similar approach is called for in addressing cultural heritage. Consider the following points when planning heritage events for your school.
Develop learning objectives. Too often we skip this step and go directly to drawing up a list of possible presenters. In developing the learning objectives, ask members of that particular ethnic, racial, or gender group what they would like their peers to understand about their heritage and what aspects of their culture and heritage they would like to explore themselves. This step is worthwhile, even if members of the group are on the planning committee. The broader school community should provide input about what and how stereotypes should be addressed.
Recognize the diversity that exists within the United States and Canada. Often schools with diverse populations will hold International Festivals. Everyone brings a food or shares a tradition from his or her heritage. Using the term international gives the impression that the dishes and traditions are foreign to the United States or Canada. Yet the fact that everyone bringing something lives in North America means that the foods and traditions actually reflect domestic cultural diversity. Continue to hold the festival, but change the name to, for example, "Heritage Festival" or "Cultural Traditions Festival."
Similarly, Latinos and Asian Americans are often introduced as immigrant or international cultures. In reality, Latinos arrived on this continent before the Pilgrims, and Asian Americans have played a major role in U.S. history for more than 150 years.
Address the values, history, current reality, and power relationships that shape a culture. Heritage months frequently feature the crafts, music, and food of specific cultures. These are important expressions of culture. However, in isolation they mask the obstacles that people of color have faced, how they have confronted those obstacles, the great diversity within any cultural group, and the current reality of people in the United States. Invite representatives from local advocacy groups to make presentations or to assist you in identifying curricular resources. Look for ways to present the complexity and diversity that exist within any culture. For example, do the images in your school of Latinos include Latinos of African or Asian heritage? The catalog Teaching for Change is full of useful books, videos, and CD-ROMs (www.teachingforchange.org).
Learn about food and dance in context. Don't ban all potlucks and dance performances—just make them more meaningful. Have students or teachers interview parents about the dishes they plan to prepare. That is, instead of collecting just recipes, collect stories. Ask parents how they learned to make the dish and what they remember about the person who taught them or the experience. Have your pencil or tape recorder ready because the stories will flow. These cultural texts can be posted next to the dishes at the dinner or bound into a classroom reader. Any study of foods can also include an examination of the roots of hunger, as presented in the high school curriculum Finding Solutions to Hunger: A Hunger Program for Middle and Upper School Students(Kempf, 1997).
In a similar way, students can interview guest dancers or musicians about the stories behind their performances. Students can read examples of how the life of an artist can be placed in context in the children's books In My Heart, I Am a Dancer(Yin, 1996) and The Piñata Maker(Ancona, 1994).
Include all the Americas. Heritage months provide a meaningful opportunity to explore the relationship of U.S. history to the history of all the Americas. For example, during Black History Month, students can learn about the only country in the Americas to become free from colonialism and slavery at the same time—Haiti; see Teaching About Haiti (Sunshine & Menkart, 1994). They can read the words of Marcus Garvey, who spoke of the brotherhood of blacks throughout the Americas. Women's History Month offers an opportunity to learn about women's groups in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada, such as the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina.
Portray Native Americans in the present. Curricular units on Native Americans are rife with stereotypes, including the false beliefs that they were all alike—with feathers and teepees—and that they are now a "vanished race." No wonder Native peoples receive so little support in their current struggles to maintain land and language; most people in the United States are barely aware of their existence. The traditional curriculum may move children to sympathize with the Native peoples in the past and even to imagine that if they had been among the early European settlers, they would have defended Native rights. Meanwhile, students are oblivious to the fact that Native Americans continue to be removed from their lands and that contemporary opportunities to defend those rights are available.
Students can also learn about Native people throughout the Americas—Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and South America. Useful films include Incident at Oglala (Apted, 1991) and Broken Rainbow (Earthworks, 1985). I, Rigoberta Menchu(Burgos-Debray, 1984), the biography of the Nobel Prize winner, presents a detailed description of Mayan culture and the injustices faced by Mayan people today.
Introduce leaders in the context of their organizations. Children are given the false impression that great people make history all on their own. Instead of serving as inspiration, the heroes are portrayed as superhuman. Children cannot picture themselves in this history. Instead, we can teach about organized movements for change. For example, when learning about Rosa Parks, students can also learn about the Montgomery bus boycott. When learning about Martin Luther King Jr., they can learn about his role in the sanitation workers' strike; see the video At the River I Stand(Appleby, Graham, & Ross, 1993). Children have to learn from history how change really happens if the curriculum is to serve as a tool for them to build their future.
Examine the overall school curriculum. When Carter J. Woodson initiated a week-long celebration of Negro history in 1926, he intended to build on the full year's curriculum. Ask yourselves, Is Black History Month a celebration of an integrated curriculum, or are we squeezing all black history lessons into February? If the content of the overall curriculum is largely Eurocentric, we can assume that students still learn that whites are most important and that everyone else plays a superficial role.
To transform the curriculum, teachers need to broaden their own understanding of U.S. history, literature, and identity. Your school can honor each heritage month by providing release time for a group of adults to read and discuss a book on that culture's history. Invite teachers, other school staff, parents, and members of the community to participate. When the school system's central administration asks for a report on the activities held to honor black or Hispanic heritage, explain that you held fewer assemblies and instead laid the groundwork for staff to revise the year-long curriculum. Such books as A Different Mirror(Takaki, 1993), Before the Mayflower(Bennett, 1987), Occupied America(Acuna, 1988), and A People's History of the United States(Zinn, 1995) are ideal for study and discussion groups.
Examine the school's policies. Heritage month events are often used to divert attention from inequities in a school's policies. Heritage month posters in the hallways feature African American and Latino leaders, but a disproportionate number of black and Latino children are suspended each week. Heritage month greetings are spoken in multiple languages during the morning announcements, but no effort is made to help children to maintain their native language. Parents are asked to bring in traditional dishes for their respective heritage month, but their lives and their knowledge are never connected to the curriculum.
Instead, each heritage month could be honored by the formation of a student-parent-teacher task force whose mission would be to take a serious look at the experience of the respective group in school and to make recommendations for improvement.
Some people argue, from the left and from the right, that we should not even have heritage months. But until women and people of color are fairly represented all year long in all subject areas, and are provided an equitable education, we need to pay special attention to these goals. Heritage months are opportunities to celebrate our achievements to date and to ensure that we will have a lot more to celebrate in the future. It is not a question of whether to have heritage months, but rather how to use that time. Will we hold some superficial events to make the school look good, or will we dig deeper to create a strong and equitable foundation for the future?
