Across the nation, students have been taught U.S. history, and for students of color their people’s expansive history has been condensed into a week or two at most. Students should be diving deeper into all roots at an earlier age.

Ethnic studies courses are now expansively being taught to students at a college level, but these requirements should be fulfilled at an earlier age.

In California, most colleges require students to take at least one course in ethnic and cultural diversity to fulfill a requirement. While many colleges like Skyline offer a handful of classes to satisfy this general education requirement, others colleges have dedicated a whole program to ethnic studies, and even made it a major.

Naturally, kids tend to be unaware of color and diversity, along with the ways kids might pick up the habits of their parents and become uncomfortable.

If kids understand cultural differences from the beginning, they have better chances of carrying that knowledge unto different stages of life.

A study conducted found in the American Educational Research Journal found that examining race and nationality along with culture and identity correlated with an increase in attendance, along with GPA and attendance rates.

The understanding of culture does not have to be just one class; perhaps, it could be incorporated into the learning system as a whole.

Younger kids might not always understand what is going on in the world around them, but high school is definitely a time to have students be more woke.

In the West Coast, especially San Francisco, classes regarding ethnic studies are now available for high school students to take.

The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) website, states that their curriculum is there to explore history through a different sense. In addition, they write that, “through the Ethnic Studies course, students are supported to discover and use their own power for the benefit of not only themselves, but also that of their community and society at large.”

Some states such as Arizona have argued that certain ethnic studies are very “anti-American” and they are not in favor of such problems.

What is more American, than learning about the different cultures in America? It is important for our youth to be educated on the histories that compose our nation, regardless of the culture they identify with.

To truly be educated means much more than knowing how to add and subtract, true intellect can be found in the knowledge of multiple subjects, and the issues happening in the world that surrounds us.

High school students have taken a stance on many political matters happening in our society today. In order to understand how things will change and not repeat history, it is important to know why things happened the way they did in the first place.

To further identify with their cultures, young people need to know their history and also their peers’ history. It is essential that this history is being taught at an early age.