In the late 1980s, New York's Board of Regents did something very few people expected.

Together with the Commissioner of Education, they created a task force to determine

if the state's social studies curriculum adequately reflected the pluralistic nature

of American society.

The task force was a veritable who's who of scholars of color.

And with great care, they examined the curricular materials used in New York's public schools,

and what they found was disturbing.

In a report entitled, a curriculum for inclusion, they concluded that African Americans and Asian Americans and Latinos and Native Americans were as a whole negatively characterized in the existing curriculum.

They also discovered that the contributions made by these groups to U.S. society and culture were almost completely omitted.

As a remedy, they suggested revamping the entire curriculum so that it reflected the multicultural experiences and contributions of every American.

I was in high school when the task force released its report, just chilling at Brooklyn's finest public school.

Midwood High School at Brooklyn College.

Midwood is in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, a working class neighborhood that produced the

Fushnikins, special ed, and the notorious R.B.G.

Biggies from around bedstye.

So I can attest to the truth and accuracy of the curriculum for inclusion report.

The Black experience was almost entirely absent from my classes.

Subjects like slavery were reduced to the unfortunate personal practices of a handful of men way down south somewhere. And when slavery was over,

well, it was just over.

The Curriculum for Inclusion Report came some 20 years after the height of organizing efforts by Black Brooklynites to gain greater curricular control over the schools in their neighborhoods.

In this sense, a curriculum for inclusion was long overdue, but it was still the Reagan era,

so the report was also very much ahead of its time.

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