For the 2024-2025 school year, LVUSD will require all freshmen to take College Prep Human Geography in place of Freshman Seminar. This change will also see the mandatory addition of an Ethnic Studies curriculum for the 2025-2026 school year, per the California Department of Education’s (CDE) new requirements.
There are a number of factors contributing to this change, notably the UC school system’s plan to make Ethnic Studies an admission requirement. This requirement may never see the light of day due to arguments that the course is anti-zionist. Regardless of whether the UC or CDE drops this requirement, it seems LVUSD may be keeping it due to the prior consensus that Freshman Seminar needed replacing.
According to CHS Social Studies Chair Bradley Boelman in an email with the Courier, by having a year-long course of CP Human Geography with Ethnic Studies integrated into it, LVUSD is ensuring, that even if the CDE pulls Ethnic Studies as a graduation requirement, 9th graders still have a rigorous social studies course. As it stands, Freshman Seminar, the current 9th-grade social studies requirement, makes it so that students lack a substantial history education between 8th and 10th grade. The substitution of this new course looks to rectify this.
It is important to note that CP Human Geography will be a rather flexible course, with Ethnic Studies not needing to be added until a year after its implementation in LVUSD, leading teachers to test what will be the best way to teach the course. However, the CP Human Geography’s fluidity may lead some to be concerned that Ethnic Studies, the only part of the course that would truly be required, will become lost in the shuffle, similar to Freshman Seminar’s Health unit.
No matter how Ethnic Studies looks in the coming years, it is believed it needs to be taught in schools, graduation requirement or otherwise. Only 20.1% of California’s public school students for the 2022-2023 school year were white. This, coupled with events like the Oct. 7th Hamas attack, likely added to the initial discussion on Ethnic Studies, not to mention research supporting the idea that teaching the course increases attendance and graduation rates. All everyone can hope is that Ethnic Studies does not dissolve the same way Sex Ed. did in Freshman Seminar.
