The Debate Club discussion

Does a standardized curriculum promote fairness, or does it hinder equity by failing to represent diverse student backgrounds?

as an asian kid in the public school system, we’re barely represented. i specifically went to a school with two other asian girls out of like 1000 kids and it was SO depressing. kids, specifically in america, are sorely lacking knowledge of other cultures. do you know how many times i had to explain to people that yes, even tho i wasn’t chinese, korean, or japanese, i was still asian? all the books we read are written by white people, there’s like one book for hispanic heritage, and the small small lessons about black history we get during february, and even with those it’s only ever about slavery and civil rights. it’s like the curriculum chooses one aspect of a culture and stereotypes it/ zooms in on it and doesn’t give students a proper, full sense into the cultures.

if you don’t wanna read all that here’s basically the summary 😭: there’s barely any representation of other cultures in standard curriculums and you’re only really ever taught really small things and the cultures are super generalized.

I agree. I'm a Muslim and bisexual. In my 6th grade year I made presentations, slideshows, games, and activities for Islam. In 7th and 8th grade it was soooo much more structured so I couldn't share anything about my religion and then in 8th grade, my older brother and I were invited to our first meeting. It was just me and him in front of 15 staff members. I definitely think there needs to be more rep of a lot of groups. In my English 1 class we focus a lot on Indigenous people. In SEAC we talked about racism and student/student conversations and microaggressions in the hallways but it needs to be more specific and in depth. I get the issue but incorporate an all school assembly for various groups of people.

I completely agree. I’m homeschooled but my curriculum is commonly used in schools near me. Not only is my information commonly outdated and I am always complaining to my mom about important details they leave out, there is NO good representation. They don’t focus on any black or African American people, even essential ones like Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King Junior. I have seen no representation of any other races, or even women. The fact that this is a commonly used curriculum? No. If mine is anything to bad off of, and my public school friends’ knowledge is anything to base off of, there is nowhere near enough representation.
I despise the civil war, and not because of slacery, because of the way it’s taught. I think that part should be focusing on the struggles slaves go through, in depths of their lives. And political affairs. I don’t need to hear about how justified the farmers thought they were. And the fact it’s the only war my curriculum at least really teaches about? At this point I’ve heard every bit of American history and I study other countries by myself because I’m not going to any other way. Even if they do in other curriculums I’ve tried, it’s generalized the entirety of Asia. This is why if I ask my parents or a family friend anything about other countries, they’ll just tell me about china stealing our information or the UK has a king or queen and America is so much better because we don’t. This is the level of knowledge currently being taught about other ethnicities and races, and it really shows, and is really sad.

I know. Its really upsetting when you know the curriculum that you are learning from has zero true rep. from any sort of group.

Khadijah wrote: "I know. Its really upsetting when you know the curriculum that you are learning from has zero true rep. from any sort of group."

Yes! That was kind of a rant but it’s a serious issue. We don’t learn anything about smaller countries, like Kazakhstan for example. I loved Kazakhstan’s culture but school never even mentioned it. China, Japan, and Korea both north and south have all different cultures that deserve to be individually recognized and not grouped together by a ten minute ‘Asia lecture’.

yeah. like i get it, it is extremely important to know about america, but the bias is crazy. like we did such an in-depth study of semi modern europe, but we only covered other regions until medieval periods? europe isn't even that much more important than other countries, especially after the formation of america. and we never cover modern history. literally i have yet to learn a thing about the 1900s in school.

had to explain to a classy of sixth graders i was from south east asia, that Vietnam and india were in fact in asia, and that asia was the biggest continent 😭 that was a hard day

siera ᯓ★ (semi-ia) wrote: "had to explain to a classy of sixth graders i was from south east asia, that Vietnam and india were in fact in asia, and that asia was the biggest continent 😭 that was a hard day"

what 😭
where did they think vietnam and india were bro

i also want to point out that a lot of textbooks have no issue referring to indigenous americans as "indians", like bro as an actual indian person i hate that. and im pretty sure actual indigenous people do too

siera ᯓ★ (semi-ia) wrote: "had to explain to a classy of sixth graders i was from south east asia, that Vietnam and india were in fact in asia, and that asia was the biggest continent 😭 that was a hard day"

frr like in elementary school I said I was Indian and the class thought I was Native American, and I was like no guys I'm Asian and they were so confused because I don't look east Asian 💀

In some grades, we learn a bit about other cultures, but definitely not enough. In 6th grade, I learned about Buddism, Doeism (sorry if I spell these wrong) and one other thing that I can't remember. I don't think I learned anything about other cultures in 7th grade, and I probably won't this year in American History. Perhaps there should be optional courses on other cultures, or have a bigger part of the current curriculum being other cultures?

having only ever experienced three years of normal public school (kindergarten, 1st, 5th), maybe i'm not the best to speak on this, but i live in an extremely blue state, and at least in my more specialized programs, we were encouraged and even required active discussions on modern race, gender, social and ethical issues (we'd watch the news sometimes lol), and had a big focus on independent study beyond state curriculum, so i definitely had the opportunity to do lots of research on lesser discussed sides of history
some of my favorites included french colonialism the the congo, the middle east partitions, navajo codetalkers, and we had a really big focus on indigenous peoples as well, and the important part was that we were supposed to connect these things in history with modern events. can we see effects of this today? is there something that we can apply from this to a current issue? etcetc, and i think that's really important for people to not only know history but also understand and connect it

that's valid.

ashh ³³ ᵈᵘ ᵈᵘ ᵈᵘ wrote: "having only ever experienced three years of normal public school (kindergarten, 1st, 5th), maybe i'm not the best to speak on this, but i live in an extremely blue state, and at least in my more sp..."

that sounds really cool. we almost never learn about indigenous people, the last time we had a unit on them was in 5th freaking grade (i'm in 9th rn), even though they are such a crucial part of us history and i can't believe we never touched on it in middle school
i mean of course indigenous people were mentioned and stuff, but we never fully examined them yk? we only looked at them when they interacted with the colonists/americans, and never actually studied their lives outside of that.

I don’t know about the us, but here in Canada, or at least the schools ive went to, I think for the most part they are. Every year in June, they do a lot of lessons about LGBTQ in general and include learning about it into the curriculum all year round. My old school even had a GSA club and a mini pride parade at the school. With cultures and races, it seems decent too, we learned a lot about holidays from other cultures in early grades, the library always had tons of books of so many different cultures, etc. we also have class in elementary schools that mandatory where you learn the language the indigenous people here speak and the culture, and there’s tons of other opportunities for that. In social studies you also learn a lot about different races and cultures, in a positive way of course. Honestly, we almost never learn about European cultures at all though, and some lessons have led to me feeling extreme guilt for being white as they do tend to shame people a bit for the bad things their ancestors did, but that’s very different

Oh and when I was younger they did days like for truth and reconciliation day there was activities where you learned a lot about indigenous history, tried foods etc, and of course there’s orange shirt day, they had similar things for other cultures sometimes I think too

doesn't canada have a huge racism problem, like racist to indigenous peoples?

and like they do a lot for black history month too, where we learned a lot about it (btw this was all at the regular public school I was at from grades k-7, I’ve been homeschooled since then)

i believe that education on the indigenous peoples of whatever country you're from is equally as important as learning 'newer' people, like for example, in america, history shouldn't start at the mayflower, we should be studying the original people and their practices. grossly underrepresented, many average citizens have an extremely stereotypical view of them that is so incredibly offensive, and the racism they face is much more covert that many other races face, as it's so built into our society as an assumption of their character that they are 'animalistic' and so we approach and treat them like that, not understanding their culture beyond poor media representation

the history of indigenous people globally is very interesting to me, because we really don't understand the extent of the brutality they faced, the massacres, the mockery, the violence, many people aren't taught about the trail of tears, the stolen generations, the canadien residential schools, their history and practice were forcibly erased and burned to assimilate them into white culture, or just rid their people entirely

i know this isn't exactly on topic, but honestly i think everyone should study first nation culture from all over the world, i think it's very upsetting how the world turns a blind eye to these parts of history, and i hope more people study and learn about it

exactly!!
also it's really hard to empathize with their position when we're never taught about their lives before the colonists came. literally no one talks about that.

agreed, there's no 'starting' point to history, and if there was it certainly shouldn't be when the europeans came along. i hate how in so many curriculums you study ancient cultures (that too, greek, chinese, roman, indian, egyptian, mesopotanian and like nothing else), stop at the spice trade, and then skip to the american revolution, like huh guys where did everything go

and also if white people are claiming 'forced white guilt' i hope they're actually learning about the terrible persecutions and events that colonial culture caused, and not just learning the 'highlighted' parts in history, where the only thing white people are told the only terrible thing they've done is enslavement of african americans, because honey please, we're barely getting started.
same thing with like many british (and many other european countries) schools not teaching the real colonial histoy, japanese schools not teaching their war crimes during ww2, and similar things across the world

like you could tell someone wow the french colonisation of haiti was absolutely terrible and they'd be like who what where, because they just talk about it <\3 i'm pretty sure more people know about armenia from the khardashians than the armenian genocide like guys please education is hot 😭🙏

exactly!! and then you have people who deliberately refuse to teach kids the hard parts of american history because they're afraid kids will feel hurt. which is honestly kind of stupid, because while i do get it, today's teenagers had nothing to do with decades/centuries old events, and it is still important to learn all parts of history, not the just the easy ones. especially if it's your country's history.

Yes and no. A standardized curriculum can promote fairness by setting common expectations and ensuring that all students, regardless of location or background, have access to a baseline quality of education. But at the same time, it can hinder equity by overlooking the cultural, linguistic, and contextual diversity of students across regions and communities.

As someone who has studied within multiple systems such as the IB, the standard American curriculum, and CBSE, I have seen both sides firsthand. The IB is not strictly standardized, but it is globally recognized and offers flexibility that promotes fairness and equity. The Self-Taught (ST) Language option is a good example: it allows students to study literature in their native language even if their school does not offer it. Though I personally chose Spanish, I had friends who took their mother tongues through this route and felt deeply connected to their cultural roots while studying in an international environment. In that sense, the IB acknowledges that fairness is not about sameness, but about opportunity and access.

In more standardized systems such as the American or CBSE curricula, fairness often comes through consistency. In CBSE, for example, all students follow a uniform national framework, which ensures academic parity across the country. However, this same standardization can sometimes dilute representation. That said, when I was in elementary school, we were required to study three languages until grade eight, including English and Hindi. I chose Sanskrit, while others could study German, French, Spanish, or Japanese. That multilingual policy, though standardized, actually supported cultural inclusivity and linguistic diversity within India’s educational framework.

When I later switched to an American high school, I noticed that while the curriculum was standardized in structure, schools had more flexibility in application. We were offered Hindi, French, Spanish, and even Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan. Some students even took up self-taught languages with online tutors. This showed that even within a fixed curriculum, individual schools could adapt and create more equitable opportunities for diverse students.

Ultimately, it is not the curriculum itself but how schools interpret and implement it that determines whether it is fair or equitable. Standardized systems can never fully represent every background since they have to draw a line somewhere, but when schools consciously make space for cultural expression through language offerings, celebrations, and student choice, they bridge that gap.

In short, standardized curricula promote fairness through consistency, but they can hinder equity if rigidly applied. The real measure of inclusivity lies in how flexibly schools bring those standards to life.

ashh ³³ ᵈᵘ ᵈᵘ ᵈᵘ wrote: "doesn't canada have a huge racism problem, like racist to indigenous peoples?"

Not at all where I live