Reimagining a Global Curriculum

Maggie Walker Governor’s School prides itself upon its globally oriented curriculum and its culturally diverse and attentive students. Every student at MLWGS begins with a mandatory English and a Global Studies course, both integral components to nurturing culturally knowledgeable students. The school’s English courses, World Literature and Composition I and II, as well its history courses, Global Studies I and II, are mandatory for every freshman and sophomore. 

World Literature and Composition aims for the student to “gain an appreciation of a broad scope of literature, literary movements, and recurrent themes” and “develop an understanding of literature’s interdisciplinary connections.” The Global Studies curriculum operates on similar themes. Cycle I (or one year) of Global Studies covers Europe and Russia, Middle East, and the Indian Subcontinent; cycle II (the second year) covers East and South-East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.

The Global Studies curriculum, as evidenced by the course’s own name, was devised to provide students with a diverse perspective, something especially crucial in a school dedicated to government and international studies. However, complaints about the diversity of the Global Studies material have long plagued the Social Studies department, with such protests coming to the forefront of the school conversation of diversity, equity, and inclusion during the Black Lives Matter protests in Richmond and across the nation in 2020. Specifically, students have taken issue with the seemingly large amount of content dedicated to learning European and imperialist history, compared to the history of other countries.

“There is so much more emphasis put on learning white European history,” wrote a student anonymously on the @POCatMLWGS account on Instagram in 2020. The Instagram account (which stands for People of Color at Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School) was created two years ago to give students and alumni of color a place to share their experiences with race at school, and incited numerous discussions about diversity and inclusion in the student body and among administration. “In my freshman Global Studies class, my teacher ‘ran out of time’ to learn about the entire continent of South America. We learned absolutely nothing about Latin America, yet, in sophomore Global Studies, spent an entire semester on Europe.” 

Other students have expressed similar sentiments, emphasizing the need for greater diversity in content within Global Studies and World Literature. “One of the biggest problems is that the curriculum, which is supposed to be internationally focused, is barely international at all,” says junior Carolyn Zhuang. “World Literature? It’s all European writers.” Another junior, Mariam Jafari-Nassali, noted, “I think the curriculum is very biased and focused on a certain demographic: just European countries and their impacts. Never the impacts on those they interacted with [colonized], just the European sentiment.” 

Contrarily, students have also emphasized the importance and value of learning from non-Eurocentric perspectives. “Have to shout out to Mr. Ross here, who I was lucky enough to have one year of Global with,” wrote another commenter on the @POCatMLWGS account. “He shortened the European history part in comparison to other Global teachers in order to give more attention to African and middle eastern history. That one year of Global with him made a huge difference for me and gave me a genuine appreciation to this day for non-Eurocentric history.”

This concern regarding the history and English curricula was raised formally with the Student Advisory Council (SAC), which released the results of a school-wide racial climate survey in 2020. In one of its recommendations, SAC advised curriculum modifications, including incorporating summer reading that “promotes cultural awareness” and “more positive information and contributions of historically marginalized groups.” It also recommended a redistribution of the time spent on each geographic area to “equitably represent each region, moving away from a Eurocentric model.”

For her part, Dr. Brenda Ericson, MLWGS’s Social Studies department chair, states that every region is dedicated a proportional amount of time in the Global Studies curriculum, and that teachers have to adapt to outside circumstances such as the mandatory World History SOL (required by the Virginia Department of Education), which Ericson acknowledges as being “rather Eurocentric.”

However, keeping non-Europe cycles as a part of the second semester does raise significant content and scheduling problems, as AP exams, SOLs, and snow days all limit the number of instructional days during the second and third quarters, therefore limiting the amount of time dedicated to material on regions like Latin America and Asia. Ericson acknowledges this conflict, stating, “Unfortunately, it’s always the way where whatever’s in the fourth quarter is somewhat cut because of the scheduling issues with AP exams...so that’s something we’ve struggled with.”

One seemingly simple solution to addressing an overly Eurocentric curriculum would be to teach the Europe content in the second semester of the school year instead of the first semester, and to move the material from the other regions to sit earlier in the year. Ericson acknowledges this potential solution, but brings up issues related to its practicality and problems regarding implementation. “We moved [the Europe content] to the first semester because it’s a big aspect of Global Studies, so that we could do it consecutively and make the segue to the Middle East and South Asia content more seamless, in terms of looking at the spread of Islam,” she says, emphasizing how later parts of the curriculum include events affected by Europe, making learning about Europe essentially a prerequisite for the rest of the course. This obstacle, along with the need to teach along the standardized regulations and exams required by the VDOE, makes a large content change difficult.

For now, the MLWGS Global Studies course still appears to remain largely Eurocentric due to the nature of the content and its breakdown by semester. Tangible, substantive changes have yet to be seen in terms of curriculum. However, Ericson does bring up conversations that have occurred within the history department to better reflect global history, as well as to increase the department’s knowledge overall of the culture and history of the city of Richmond, essential for teaching courses such as AP US & VA History and AP Government and Politics. 

“We’ve done professional development on Asia and South Asia,” she says. “We had a world religions teacher do a session on Hinduism because it’s really hard to teach, so she was very, very helpful. We did a whole program on the redlining of Richmond and even walked through the houses of some of the lawyers who worked on Brown v. Board of Education, so we’ve done a lot to incorporate the knowledge of our faculty. Our colleagues are constantly sharing new ideas.” 

Assistant Director Max Smith echoes these sentiments, stating, “The English department and the Global Studies department are having dialogues on how to reshape the curriculum to include more non-imperialist pieces and history.”

However, despite diversity and equity conversations within the Social Studies department taking place this past year in response to student and administrative concerns—something Ericson heavily emphasizes—tangible results have remained largely unclear to the student body. The Europe cycle remains in the first semester and therefore receives the largest amount of attention, and no other changes have actively been communicated to students. “I wish they would tell us about the changes they’ve made with respect to the curriculum,” Zhuang mentions. “I have no idea if any progress has even occurred on these issues.”

The World Literature curriculum has faced similar challenges over the past year. At MLWGS, the English department strives to address the components to literature that are both anglophonic (English-speaking) and non-anglophonic; however, the implementation of such a mission has historically been challenging. 

Traditionally, Shakespeare’s writings are seen as the cornerstone of English literature, and although these classic European pieces are significant to a well-rounded English curriculum, a heavy emphasis on authors such as Shakespeare suggests a Eurocentric approach to the English curriculum, something that Ms. Kerry Sheppard, the English department chair, acknowledges: “Right now, we think we’re too Eurocentric. We think we’re too male-dominated as well.” 

In particular, the World Literature 9 and 10 courses have attracted the most complaints from students for their lack of literary diversity. In World Literature 9 in freshman year, the three main literary works that students read include Oedipus Rex, The Odyssey, and Macbeth, authored respectively by Sophocles, Homer, and Shakespeare. Although the summer reading assignment varies from year to year, it has also remained quite Eurocentric. In 2019, freshman students were assigned 1984 by George Orwell; this year, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Works by female authors and authors of color are largely—if not completely—omitted from the curriculum. The same occurs in World Literature 10 in students’ sophomore year, with the main works being Inferno, written by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. 

For juniors and seniors, especially those enrolled in AP English Language and AP English Literature, the assignments are more diverse, consisting of works such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

One significant barrier to diversifying works that Sheppard brings up is language; most of Maggie Walker’s faculty and students are only fluent in English, and when other works are translated into English, significant material can be lost. Sheppard also reflects on the logistical difficulties of teaching and exposing students to global literature. “I can’t just flip a switch and say ‘Okay, read this.’ I don’t necessarily have the precise moment at this time to read a novel, to find out if that novel is worthy of studying.” Remarking on choosing works, she adds, “Inside the African continent, there are, you know, a thousand languages. So, which culture—which country—do I choose from?” 

Moreover, Sheppard remarks on the immense responsibility that can sometimes be placed on the teacher with the limitations of time and language: “I have to look for a translation that is correct, when I often don’t know what the original was.” 

Although no substantive developments have occurred, Sheppard and other English teachers make clear that tangible change regarding diversifying Maggie Walker’s English assignments is a goal for the near future, and that a more progressive curriculum is deeply needed at the school. “It takes time,” she says. For Mariam Jafari-Nassali, “I feel like it will definitely be a while before the curriculum starts to expand its focus, but we’re definitely capable of making that shift,” and that sentiment evidently seems to be widely shared amongst past and current student bodies.

Until then, our school dedicated to government and international studies provides a largely incomplete global view.