Public school teachers across California have taught Cesar Chavez’s contributions to the labor movement for a long time. Now they’re figuring out how to revise those lessons given the recent allegations against him of sexual assault.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today is the birthday of Cesar Chavez. For years, it’s been celebrated as a holiday in California, where he co-founded the farmworker movement. But after reporters detailed sexual abuse and assault allegations against Chavez this month, California teachers are scrambling to come up with new lesson plans. Katie DeBenedetti with member station KQED has this report.
KATIE DEBENEDETTI, BYLINE: Hundreds crowded into a high school auditorium earlier this month in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood for the school district’s annual mariachi concert.
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DEBENEDETTI: Students played alongside their teachers and professional musicians. Behind the scenes, sexual assault allegations against Cesar Chavez reverberated even through the concert’s music.
MARTHA RODRIGUEZ-SALAZAR: One of the sentences, it says, come, dove, and say to Cesar Chavez to stop shedding tears.
DEBENEDETTI: That’s mariachi teacher Martha Rodriguez-Salazar.
RODRIGUEZ-SALAZAR: Instead of saying Cesar Chavez, we put campesinos, which is farmers.
DEBENEDETTI: They chose to replace Chavez’s name after a New York Times investigation revealed allegations that he sexually abused two young girls in the 1970s and raped fellow labor leader Dolores Huerta in the 1960s. The revelations came just before Chavez’s birthday, which is a time when many teachers bring up his legacy.
DAVID KO: I was already planning on explaining to students about Cesar Chavez Day and little kind of insights into the farmworkers movement.
DEBENEDETTI: David Ko teaches high school ethnic studies and U.S. history in San Francisco. He says he used to describe the co-founder of United Farm Workers labor union this way.
KO: I would say that he was a Mexican American activist and labor organizer.
DEBENEDETTI: Now Ko says his lesson plan will be a bit more complicated.
KO: There’s people who have done remarkable, amazing accomplishments in advancing people’s rights and causes, and it’s also possible for those same people to have harmful ideas.
DEBENEDETTI: Many educators, like ninth-grade teacher Samantha Aguirre, say they had already shifted focus away from him in recent years.
SAMANTHA AGUIRRE: Students are often taught this one great man did all these amazing things, but what they don’t always learn is that it was hundreds, tens of thousands of people behind them in the movement.
DEBENEDETTI: Her classes study the farmworker movement’s lesser-known Filipino leaders and women like Huerta. Now she’ll include the allegations against Chavez as another piece of the movement’s history.
AGUIRRE: Hearing Dolores Huerta saying, like, he assaulted me, but I felt like I couldn’t say anything ’cause it would be bad for the movement, I think that this is an important lesson in our communities.
DEBENEDETTI: Education policy experts say the California Department of Education can’t tell teachers exactly how to teach Chavez. But the agency does provide model curriculum for K through 12. After the state renamed its holiday to Farmworkers Day, the department put a three-sentence pop-up advisory on its Chavez curriculum page, urging teachers to focus on the movement as, quote, “a struggle greater than one man.” The department did not respond to questions about if or how it will revise that curriculum in light of the new allegations. Aguirre says it will be up to teachers to evolve with the history.
AGUIRRE: It’s our responsibility as historians, as educators to take that new information and change what we teach and we know.
DEBENEDETTI: It’s not erasing history, she says. It’s just teaching that history is a bit more complicated.
For NPR News, I’m Katie DeBenedetti in San Francisco.
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