Worthington third-grader Rosie Factora-Borchers barely rose above the microphone as she stood in front of the Ohio House’s Primary and Secondary Education Committee.
But the 8-year-old Filipino-American made her presence known as she urged the committee to include her family’s story in social studies curricula across the state.
At the heart of Rosie’s motivation to support House Bill 171 was sharing stories about her family at school, especially the stories of her grandparents.
“I call them Lolo and Lola, which means grandfather and grandmother in Tagalog, their native language in the Philippines,” Factora-Borchers told the committee.
Her grandparents moved from the Philippines to the U.S. six decades ago, and Rosie’s mother, Lisa Factora-Borchers, said they are happy to have settled in Massillon.
“My retired parents still live in their beloved split-level house on a cul-de-sac in Massillon, Ohio, and they love Ohio more than any place they have ever been,” Lisa told the committee. “I want their contributions and stories to be acknowledged in the curriculum my children learn in their schools.”
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Lisa, too, reflected on her schooling, in which she held the same curiosities about her family history, but didn’t learn about it in her everyday schooling.
“I have dozens of cousins, most of them live in the coastal cities — Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles — and as a child, I yearned to live in a place where I could more easily access history and storytelling that reflected my family’s story,” she said.
The Factora-Borchers were two of nearly 80 testimonies submitted to the committee for their recent meeting, all standing in support of HB 171.
The bill seeks to change the state’s K-12 model curriculum to include “age and grade-appropriate instruction in the migration journeys, experiences and societal contributions of a range of communities in Ohio and the United States,” including African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Arabs, African and North African immigrants, refugees and asylees, Appalachians, Jews, Latin Americans and Native Americans.
Despite the many submissions, the committee only heard from a handful of people, with the hearing listed as “invited testimony.”
OPAWL – Building AAPI Feminist Leadership, the group who led the charge for the introduction of the bill by Democratic state Rep. Mary Lightbody, D-Westerville, said more than 3,000 letters were sent to the committee from individuals and groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ohio, the Young Latino Network and education groups before the testimony was limited.
“Obviously this is something that people in our state feel very passionate about,” said committee chair state Rep. Adam Bird, R-New Richmond, noting the other testimonies which were posted to the bill’s legislative page.
Sarah Kaka, of the Ohio Council for the Social Studies, was one of the few who testified in person, and she praised the bill for attempting to build a social studies curriculum “that reflects the makeup of Ohio classrooms.”
“This content will allow students to recognize themselves, their way of life and the contributions of their shared identities within the fabric of our history and as a valued contributor within society,” said Kaka, who is also an associate professor of Education at Ohio Wesleyan University, with two-decades of social studies education experience.
Kaka also acknowledged her opposition testimony to a different bill regarding the social studies curriculum: House Bill 103, which sought to establish a task force that would change Ohio’s social standards to be aligned with the “American Birthright” model. That model, built by a right-wing group called The Civics Alliance, pushes Christian American history and prevention of the “subornation of civics education to political recruitment tools,” according to the alliance’s explanation of the standards.
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“That was somewhat different (than HB 171) in that it was restricting the content that was going to be taught in Ohio schools,” Kaka said. “This is expanding it to be more inclusive of all communities.”
The American Historical Association also criticized HB 103, saying it would “hobble” student learning by leaving education experts out of the curriculum-building process.
HB 103’s sponsor, state Rep. Don Jones, R-Freeport, stands on the committee considering HB 171 and expressed fear about “what happens if we forget somebody” from the list of communities included in the bill.
“It’s a pretty good list, but I think there are probably others that would feel like they are slighted if they’re not included,” Jones said.
Notably, Jones was also a lead author on a previous bill to regulate K-12 curriculum and ban the “promotion” of “Marxist ideologies” and other concepts in school districts, and keep discussions in schools away from race or class issues to avoid guilt among some groups.
In 2021, Jones called teaching history with the inclusion of race and societal issues “the next Common Core,” a widely criticized educational standard from 2010.
Committee member and state Rep. Sean Brennan, D-Parma, suggested a change to HB 171 because, as a former teacher himself, he was concerned “that we keep adding more to the plate” of teachers by adding the changes to the model curriculum, rather than the instructional resources and supports for educators.
“When you add it to the model curriculum, that’s what teachers have to teach, that’s what kids have to know and be able to do and that’s what shows up on a state test,” Brennan said.
OPAWL member Arianna Kelawala said the bill was formulated “after a careful review of the model curriculum to try to fill the gaps where we saw that there were some,” but Kaka said changing that curriculum wouldn’t hem in teachers, as it’s only used as a guide for teachers to apply the required standards to their lesson plans.
“Adding it to the model curriculum wouldn’t necessarily change the standards in any way, but it would enhance the guidance that teachers would be provided with in terms of the content that they would teach,” Kaka told the committee.
This story was originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal and republished here with permission.
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This article appears in Dec 13-26, 2023.
