Ethnic Studies and Why It Is Important

For this blog post, I am going to talk about the "Precious Knowledge" video that we watched last class and the reading "The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies" by Christine Sleeter and how they intertwine. In the "Precious Knowledge" film that we watched during class time, it really emphasized how important ethnic studies classes are for students. In the movie which was filmed in Tucson, Arizona, the Mexican American Studies program at Tucson High School brought students of all cultures and races together. It taught the students about their own cultural identity as well as others. Author Christine Sleeter also talks about how ethnic studies should be necessary as it can change someone's life for the better as we saw in the film. She talks about a boy named Carlos and how he was not a very good student. Later on, Carlos was introduced to the Chicano studies courses that his friend was taking at the time. After a while, Carlos became so interested in the course that he took as many Chicano courses as he possibly could. We learned in the film that about 50% of Mexican American students drop out of high school. Tucson High School's ethnic studies program was not only insightful but increased the graduation rate to about 93%. This goes to show that programs like the one at Tucson High School help students become more successful, more knowledgable about themselves, and their culture. Regular curricula can often be seen as "bias" or "boring" and not as insightful because it focuses more on one specific topic. In the film, we saw how engaged the students were even though some said that it was a challenging class. Many appreciated the challenge because it helped them grow and gain confidence.

Click on the link below to learn more about some of the advantages that come along with ethnic studies courses! → The Benefits of Ethnic Studies