Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Introduction: Ethnic Studies as “General Education” after AB 1460
by Trung P.Q. Nguyen, Ryan Buyco, May Lin, Simmy Makhijani, Saugher Nojan, and Wendi Yamashita
ABSTRACT: This practioner’s essay engages with the structural obstacles and pedagogical approaches toward teaching the “Introduction” Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies courses in the aftermath of AB 1460. Despite now introducing all CSU students to the tenets of Ethnic Studies courses as part of their general education, the introductory Ethnic Studies classroom has become a space where the decades-long outcomes of defunded education, the dismantling of public good, the sharpening of right-wing politics, and the neoliberalization of the university as transactionary rather than liberatory have come to surface. Against being framed as “useless” or otherwise a “waste of time” (like many other general education courses), the authors, who have experienced these conditions in the Ethnic Studies classroom as the first cohort of Ethnic Studies educators after AB 1460, analyze and critically reflect upon the structural conditions that create what we call the “neoliberalized student” – the forms of foreclosed futures, accelerated crisis in the cost of living, inhumane expansion of student debt, and the saturation of market logic within the realms of everyday life that in turn systematically devalue Ethnic Studies, critical thought, freedom dreaming, and the struggle for liberation through education at the student level. In response, we identify where these ideas have emerged, situate them within their historical contexts, and how to challenge them. Our hope is to outline new ways to reframe the introductory Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies class as not just about the reproduction of content, but also as a set of strategies to undo these specific structures of neoliberalism that coalesce upon both the student and educator in our particular historical juncture. In doing so, we hope to revitalize those exhausted by the struggle we encounter teaching Introductory Ethnic Studies and imagine new paths of collective liberation through the classroom.
Article Citation: Trung P.Q. Nguyen, Ryan Buyco, May Lin, Simmy Makhijani, Saugher Nojan, and Wendi Yamashita (2024) Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Introduction: Ethnic Studies as “General Education” after AB 1460. AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community: 2024, Vol. 21, No. 1 & 2.