WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders believe racial issues should be taught in U.S. schools and oppose efforts to limit the topics that can be discussed in class, according to a fresh poll.
In the poll by AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 71% of AAPI adults support teaching about the history of slavery, racism and segregation in public schools in grades 1-12. The same share also said they would support teaching about the history of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the United States, while about half support teaching about topics related to sex and sexuality.
AAPI Democrats are more supportive of teaching these topics in the classroom than AAPI Republicans.
Yet only 17 percent of AAPI adults believe school boards should have the ability to limit the topics students and teachers talk about in class, and about a quarter of AAPI Republicans support such restrictions.
The findings suggest that efforts to politicize education through culture war issues have not made much headway in Asian American communities, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside, and founder of AAPI Data. Across the country, conservative members of state legislatures and local school boards have sought to limit teaching about race and gender in classrooms.
“Even though parents are concerned about K-12 education and are engaged in various ways, the culture wars are not an issue among AAPI parents,” he said. “I think that’s important because there’s so much coverage of it and certainly a lot of political activity.”
The number of immigrant Americans who do not have AAPI status is growing rapidly, but compact samples and language barriers often prevent their views from being analyzed in other surveys.
Glenn Thomas, a 53-year-old father of three public school children who identifies as politically independent and is both Japanese and white, said that while he does not object to addressing issues such as race and gender in the classroom, he does not believe those issues should be the sole focus in designing the curriculum.
“I’m rather old-fashioned when it comes to literacy and arithmetic,” he said of schools’ approach to issues such as gender and race. “I don’t think these necessarily need to be taught in separate curricula.”
Thomas, whose family has lived across the country due to his military career, said the influence of politics and outside actors on public schools varies greatly depending on where you live. In Florida, where he currently lives, he believes the state government has too much influence over local schools.
Nationally, 39% of AAPI adults say they follow news about their school boards, while only 13% say they have attended a local school board meeting and 18% have communicated with a local school board member in person or online. As for elections, 28% have voted in a local school board election.
While these percentages are roughly consistent with the general population, AAPI adults are slightly less likely to report voting in local school board elections.
Because a high percentage of Asian Americans are immigrants, Ramakrishnan said, many did not grow up in the same political system as the U.S., where there is a high degree of local control and influence over schools. Lack of outreach by established institutions may also contribute to lower engagement, he added.
“It takes a lot of effort to learn how the system works and how to influence that system,” he said. “Given the high level of interest (Asian American and Pacific Islander) parents have in education, you would expect higher participation rates.”
Varisa Patraporn, a Thai-American mother of two children who attend public school in California, said she regularly votes in local elections because of the essential roles these people play in decisions affecting schools. In Cerritos, where she lives, candidates often hold events and send out mailers during elections, suggesting a vigorous campaign for school board seats.
Patraporn said that while she has communicated with school board members, she has not attended any school board meetings. That’s partly because the meetings are held in the evenings and it’s harder for parents with newborn children or other commitments to attend. That means the parents who do attend and voice their opinions can have a disproportionate amount of influence.
Patraporn said she wants to make the curriculum more diverse and inclusive, despite resistance from some parents who don’t want discussions about race in class. She said she often supplements her children’s reading to expose them to a wider range of perspectives beyond what they get through their assignments.
“These conversations have started, but there’s a lot of resistance to it in our community,” she said. “There’s a lot of resistance because there’s a fear of what it means to actually talk about race.”
Ramakrishnan said the survey data suggests it’s possible to make AAPI communities more involved in their local educational institutions. According to the survey, about two-thirds of AAPI adults think the schools their children attend are extremely or very essential to their success in adult life. And about half say parents and teachers have too little influence over public school curriculum, similar to the general population.
“This community still sees college as a good thing, as an important pathway to mobility and success, and they are also concerned about the quality of K-12 education,” he said. “We have a good opportunity to engage these Asian American Pacific Islander communities in education policy and encourage their participation.”
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The survey of 1,068 Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander adults was conducted April 8-17, 2024, using a sample from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, which is designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander population. Online and telephone interviews were offered in English, the Chinese dialects Mandarin and Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Korean. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.
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