In his latest book, Dr. Wayne Au provides a broad examination of the politics of curriculum and educational policy in the United States. He covers the rising tide of censorship and challenges to diversity in the classroom — and shares the hope offered through activism, solidarity and educational justice.
“Race, Curriculum, and the Politics of Educational Justice” is part of the Multicultural Education Series from Teachers College Press. The new volume collects 10 of Au’s previously published essays and articles, which he has curated and edited for an audience of current and future educators.
“The book is more important now than it ever could have been,” said Au, dean of the University of Washington Bothell’s School of Educational Studies. “It tries to put the politics of knowledge in the context of the struggle for educational justice.”
Decolonizing the classroom
The collection begins with a piece titled “Decolonizing the Classroom,” set in Au’s ninth grade honors world history class. Listening to stories of his teacher’s trip to China, the young Au hears a consistent mispronunciation of the word lychee. At 14, he already has a lifelong fondness for the rough red fruit. Eating its juicy flesh is an annual summer highlight, and he’d been raised on his father’s tales of boyhood raids on Hawai’ian lychee groves.
When Au raised his hand in an attempt to share his firsthand knowledge with his teacher, it goes nowhere. The educator instantly dismisses him.
“He was unable to get past his Eurocentric lens on world history,” said Au. “He couldn’t validate and recognize my own familial knowledge around Chinese food, history and culture.”
It was also an unwitting counter-example of multicultural education in action.
Among his takeaways from that ninth-grade experience, Au reflects that “…when classes are not grounded in the lives of students, when they do not include the voices and knowledge of communities being studied, and when they are not based in dialogue, it creates environments where not only are white students miseducated, but students of color feel as if their very identities are under attack.”
Blending practice and theory
By chapter four, the book has moved from this practitioner-focused piece to a trenchant examination of educational theory. “The Long March Toward Revitalization: Developing Standpoint in Curriculum Studies” is drawn from a peer-reviewed academic journal.
“It lays out the theoretical piece about why it’s important to understand where we teach from, and the cultural politics of what we teach in the classroom,” said Au.
He structures the following two sections of the book in similar fashion, scaffolding from the practical to the thematic. This approach gives readers the full breadth of dynamics at work in the struggle for educational justice. After taking a close look at curriculum, Au goes on to examine racial justice, neoliberal education reform and standardized testing.
He also frames the work as a reflection of his scholarly and intellectual history. “Race, Curriculum, and the Politics of Educational Justice” charts Au’s early explorations of racial justice; then moves on to educational policy and political economy; and, most recently, covers his investigations into the effects of Asian American racialization on education.
Centering the student experience
Au’s history as an educator and activist spans some 30 years. His teaching career began at Seattle’ Garfield High School, where he led the very same world history class in which his teacher had rejected his insights about lychee fruit and Chinese culture.
Au takes a vastly different approach as a self-described radical teacher. Going beyond a critique of Eurocentric classroom knowledge, he envisions education as the means to a more equitable and just society. “For me, it’s always been about centering my students’ histories and experiences … and landing on the side of justice,” he said.
In his view, acknowledging and teaching the dark side of our shared history — including genocide, incarceration, enslavement and exploitation — makes for both clearer understanding and the ability to do better.
Now as dean of the UW Bothell’s School of Educational Studies, Au rarely uses the term “multicultural” any longer. It was once a radical and much-needed concept, he said, but “the term became too much of a blanket for everything. We need to take the heart of racial and cultural justice more seriously and carry what I’d frame as ‘sharper politics.’
“It’s really about liberation.”
