Blurring the Boundaries: The “Schooling” of Ethnic Studies and Possibilities for Community-Grounded Praxis

While Ethnic Studies (ES) emerges from deep traditions of subaltern community struggles for liberatory education, the discipline’s expanding institutionalization within K-12 schools surfaces enduring barriers to community-based education. To meet California’s new ES high school graduation requirement (AB 101), some districts are launching new classes without engaging the visions and knowledges of subaltern communities. In this case, a group of enthusiastic teachers—all new to ES—volunteered to design and launch their district’s class in a predominantly white, politically liberal community in Northern California. During the course’s first year, we gathered for monthly dialogue circles to explore the tensions and possibilities of growing community-grounded ES. Teachers shared misgivings about ES institutionalization, including their role in it, and the barriers to developing “authentic,” community-rooted ES. Yet, they pushed themselves to develop curricula that brought the community “into school” and experiential learning that brought students “into the community.” Initially, teachers centered school in their visions of community and struggled to imagine growing authentic community relationships. As we worked, teachers remembered and re-engaged existing relationships, and—in dialogue with community members—began to explore education as a community praxis. Through critical dialogue about the institutionalization of ES, we traced how infrastructures of schooling and contentious political terrain preserved boundaries in the face of an educational discipline designed to dismantle them and a research project that attempted to blur them. We also surfaced moments of possibility with which to continue imagining—and enacting—the critical, humanizing education that communities deserve.