Advocates see more Asian American history in schools as a key to understanding 

After a surge of anti-Asian incidents during the COVID pandemic, students, parents and advocates on Long Island are calling for schools to include more Asian American history in classrooms.

Supporters say doing so would help combat hate and counter harmful stereotypes such as Asian Americans being viewed as “perpetual foreigners.”

Since March 2020, the early days of the pandemic, more than 11,000 anti-Asian hate incidents have been reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition. AAPI is short for Asian American and Pacific Islander.

“With all of the anti-Asian hate crimes, a lot of people were seeing Asian Americans as others — as someone different from them,” said Christine Huang, a former New York City schoolteacher and co-director of the New York chapter of Make Us Visible, an advocacy group created during the pandemic to combat discrimination against Asian Americans.

“We really strongly believe that education is the key to lessening that gap,” said Juleigh Chin, a Herricks school board trustee who co-directs Make Us Visible in New York with Huang.

State Education Department officials point out that the teaching of Asian American history is required in New York public schools, under the department's Social Studies Framework. The department said it does not “direct or create curriculum,” which is determined by local districts.

The department also points to additional guidance that lays out the expectation that districts teach the diversity of cultures representative of New York in a way that's "comprehensive" — across grade levels and not relegated to one specific month — and "empowering." 

But many parents and students said what's being taught is inconsistent, and in many places, far from enough. They want to see lessons go beyond events specifically laid out in state guidance: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, among others.

“We want all students to learn more about AAPI history in America,” said Steve Chen, co-president of Great Neck Chinese Association and a father of two children who attend Great Neck schools.

As of last October, 10 states have enacted statutes to require AAPI curriculum, with Illinois being the first in 2021, according to an analysis by Committee of 100, a nonpartisan leadership organization of prominent Chinese Americans.

New York is not among them, and the state Education Department said in a statement that it does not support bills that mandate curriculum.

What's been done

Some Island districts, often those with large Asian student populations, have taken steps to incorporate more Asian American curriculum in recent years.

For example, in some schools, when students learn about immigration, they will not only learn about Ellis Island but also Angel Island, a holding area in the San Francisco Bay that was established in 1910 to clear Chinese and other Asian immigrants.

English teachers have added literary works by Asian authors, and history teachers have assigned required reading connected to the Asian American experience.

“People deserve to see themselves in the history that they learn,” said Frank Bua, chair of the social studies department at Great Neck South Middle School.

At the middle school where Bua teaches, eighth-graders must read “They Called Us Enemy,” a 2019 graphic memoir that recounts actor George Takei’s childhood in concentration camps. 

The Three Village Central school district is “looking at different groups, different cultures, different literature, whether it's poetry or prose, and incorporating that,” said Kevin Scanlon, superintendent of a district in which 13% of students identify as Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

In Herricks schools, where 70% of the students are Asian, the district also takes the approach of incorporating relevant topics into existing curriculum.

“We see parts of the curriculum where we can do that and we can emphasize that as opposed to dropping in an entire brand-new curriculum on top of what teachers already have to do,” said Anthony Cillis, director of social studies in the Herricks district.

For example, Cillis said, third-grade teachers could choose India or China when they teach a unit that compares a government to the United States. “We've used case studies in the past from other parts of the world,” he said. “This year, we focused on Asia.”

In Great Neck elementary schools, librarians will teach a new unit of study centering on AAPI history and experience at every grade level starting in the fall, said Kelly Newman, assistant superintendent for elementary education in the district. 

Stephen Lando, assistant superintendent for secondary education in Great Neck schools, summarized the approach there as incorporating content that's “part of a greater whole.”

“It's not something that's added,” Lando said at an event last month where district staff showcased AAPI instruction.

The event was organized by Great Neck's United Parent-Teacher Council and Great Neck Chinese Association at Great Neck South High School. Nearly half of the district's 6,500 students are Asian.

The call for more

Last fall, New York City schools launched a pilot of a new curriculum centering on AAPI voices, to be expanded in the next academic year.

"Asian American history is American history," State Sen. John Liu (D-Queens) said at an event in March. "New York City has done that now. They're catching up to Herricks and Great Neck, but we need the whole state."

Liu sponsored a bill this spring that would have required the Board of Regents to require “the commissioner to establish Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander history and civic impact curriculum or instructions for school districts.” It passed in the State Senate but stalled in the Assembly.

Huang, with Make Us Visible in New York, said such education may be even more necessary in districts with fewer Asian people.

“If you're growing up in a school where you don't have a lot of Asian Americans, you don't see them as being your classmate, your neighbor, the store owner down the street, then it's even harder for you to see them as a part of your community,” she said.

Victoria Lin, 17, a Great Neck South High School junior and member of the school's history club, said she would like to learn more about prominent Asian American figures in history.

Last month, Lin researched Norman Mineta, a son of Japanese immigrants who was imprisoned during World War II and later became the first Asian American Cabinet member.

Mineta, who died last year, was the transportation secretary during the 9/11 era.

“[People demanded], ‘Keep Muslims off airplanes, ban Middle Easterners from flying.’ There was even some talk about rounding them up, and I thought, 'I don't believe this happening in ... 2001,' given what I had experienced in 1942,” Mineta told a Los Angeles Times columnist in 2019, a quote Lin included in her research.

That kind of insight, Lin said, could be incorporated when students learn about the aftermath of 9/11.

“I'm sure there are many more Asian American figures who have been so influential,” Lin said. “If we could at least hear about them, I think that'd be really great.”

Sebastian Lennox, 18, a senior at the same high school, said education is a step toward building empathy. 

“If they're encouraged to think of ‘other’ people as being the same and similar to them and enduring the same hardships or worse ... then I think that would certainly help,” he said.

In March, Chazbir Singh Bedi, 15, marveled at the name “Make Us Visible” when he was speaking as a panelist at SUNY Old Westbury at an event organized by that group.

“That's a really good name,” Bedi said, "because I felt like I was never seen."

But he was seen, apparently for his differences, in 2021, when he was assaulted at a mall in Huntington Station. Bedi was wearing a patka, a head covering Sikh boys wear, when he was punched in the face.

The attack was investigated by the Suffolk police Hate Crimes Unit, and a 13-year-old was charged with a hate crime.

To the Syosset High School sophomore, education may be the best way to prevent what happened to him from happening to someone else. 

“The only way to stop it is by educating people,” he said.

By Dandan Zou

dandan.zou@newsday.com@DandanZou

Dandan Zou covers education for Newsday. Previously, she worked for a community newspaper in Maryland and a personal finance magazine in Washington, D.C.