Black history is American history. Black history still matters when you’re white. Some Utah parents—and their enabling school—didn’t get that memo.
The Washington Post has more on the North Ogden, Utah, families who didn’t see the point of their white children participating in Black History Month lessons.
After a week of allowing this opt-out—and receiving national blowback—Maria Montessori Academy reversed course Saturday. All students at the public charter school, including the school’s three Black students, will receive full Black History Month curriculum the rest of the month.
Maria Montessori Academy Academic Director Micah Hirokawa, whose Japanese-American family members were interned in camps in World War II, brought necessary attention to his school community with a now-deleted Facebook post. In it, Hirokawa expressed disappointment in the community for asking, and in the school for allowing such a thing to happen in the first place.
“I personally see a lot of value in teaching our children about the mistreatment, challenges, and obstacles that people of color in our Nation have had to endure and what we can do today to ensure that such wrongs don’t continue,” Hirokawa wrote.
