The portrayal of Latin America by Philadelphia public schools has always been limited. As a Latina student who has completed the entirety of her education, prior to attending Penn, within the Philadelphia School District, I can say that I was not taught anything about Latin America beyond the Maya, the Inca, and the Aztec until I entered my junior year of high school. I can remember the excitement that I felt as a sixth grader when my history teacher announced that we were going to cover a unit on Latin America the next week. However to my disappointment, all we did was look at images of Inca architecture, such as Machu Picchu, learn about the scientific developments made by the Maya, and discuss the reign of Montezuma and the use of human sacrifice within Aztec society. That was it. My education concerning Latin America, during the first sixteen years of my life, consisted of only a week and a half of history lessons spent discussing the Inca, the Maya, and the Aztec.
I find that to be underwhelming, and frankly unacceptable. How is it that I can spend years upon years of my education learning the history of the American Revolution and the Continental Congress or the Civil War and the Confederacy over and over again? Why do we have time to spends months on the reign of Queen Elizabeth I or the Medici Family’s influence in Italy, but there is no room in the curriculum for a more in depth study of Latin America beyond three empires? Not only should everyone learn more about Latin America, as it is a large part of the world with a history that is just as interesting and complex as that of any other region, but the curriculum should also include more pertaining to the cultural and ethnic background of all of the students that are receiving its education.
During the 2017-2018 academic school year, the public school system in Philadelphia provided an education for 128,102 students, this includes both public middle schools and high schools, and of those students 20.3 percent, nearly a quarter of the student population, were Latinx. In addition to that, Spanish speaking students, a categorization which includes both white and non-white Latinxs, make up more than fifty percent of the multilingual household population within the district. This means that out of the students who speak languages other than or instead of English at home, more than half are Latinx. If such a large portion of the student population is Latinx why do schools fail to properly represent Latin America within their curriculum?
I believe that if the district does not wish to include a more in-depth study of Latin America in their general curriculum, then it should at least offer the opportunity for all of those who are interested to choose to do so.The opportunity for students to study Latin America, beyond taking Spanish classes, is limited, but it does exist in some schools. Earlier on, I mentioned how the other time I studied anything concerning Latin America was during my junior year of high school. This was because I entered the International Baccalaureate program (IB) that my school offered, a program that is only offered at six Philadelphia public high schools and two elementary/middle schools out of the two hundred and fourteen schools that the Philadelphia School District manages. My IB English class that year had us read Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, two books that I had read in Spanish when I was younger at my mother’s insistence. I was thrilled because even though we read these books translated into English, we spent almost two months discussing the content, the authors, and the social contexts of these books. We discussed the role of Catholicism in Latin America, gender norms, the impact of colonialism, and the political instability that is somewhat visible even today.
While taking that IB English class, I learnt about the evolution of Latin America under the rule of Spain and Portugal in my IB History class. Even though what I learned about Latin America was primarily taught through a colonial lens, I focused a lot on the political and social structures that were present in Latin America from the 1500s to the 1800s. We were discussing the impact of slavery in places like Brazil and economic worth of Puerto Rico at the time, the creation of vice royalties and maroon societies, and figures like Simón Bolívar and Antonio José de Sucre. I think that taking part in opportunities such as the IB program introduces an entirely different curriculum which requires discussion of regions beyond the United States and Europe.
Maybe my experience with learning about Latin America is different than that of other students who have received a public school education either within or outside of Philadelphia, but to me the curriculum that most Philadelphia public schools offer lacks variety as it continues to go over the same aspects of U.S. and European history over and over again. Latin America should be represented within the curriculum in the same manner as any region in the global west.
Written By Natasha Chity-Guevara
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