Leonard Ortiz wants the Bard to share the spotlight in Lawrence high school classrooms.

Ortiz, an incoming school board member, wants the intellectual playing field for students in public schools to be diversified by including a deeper sampling of Asian, Hispanic, black and American Indian authors in a curriculum that celebrates writers including William Shakespeare who are mostly white, male and dead.

“That way for students who have a different heritage or culture other than English, they may not feel like their culture is less important,” said Ortiz, who takes a seat on the board in July.

Free State and Lawrence high schools have an English course catalog of about 20 classes that includes Dramatic and Shakespearean Literature, American Literature, British Literature, World Literature, 20th Century Literature and Epic Tradition.

Only one course, Diverse Voices in Literature, specializes in minority writers.

Ortiz, who teaches college-level history at Baker, Washburn and Kansas universities, said it was time to turn a cannon on the district’s Eurocentric canon.

Drop British Literature, he suggested, and replace it with a class that delves into a specific area of minority literature.

But Ann Bruemmer, the district’s director of arts and humanities, said the high school course list for English wasn’t likely to change soon.

Lawrence High School senior-to-be Chris Moore reads Remember

A one-year evaluation of English classes was just completed. The goal was to align English courses with state academic standards in grades nine through 12, and that was accomplished, she said.

If anything, she said, students have had too many elective options in English.

“Students are getting a lot of choice and a lot of opportunity,” Bruemmer said.

She said the district’s English classes, including British Literature, helped prepare students to be critical thinkers. She said she opposed cutting British Literature. And it’s unlikely a new course could be created in its place because of budget constraints.

Bruemmer said folks should keep in mind students were exposed to minority culture in other areas of the curriculum.

“We try to look at the whole spectrum,” she said.

¢ More about Leonard Ortiz¢English courses at Free State High School¢LHS Library – Lifetime Reading List

More choices, more books

But Alicia Jackson, an English teacher at Lawrence High School, said she would like a bit more flexibility in the district’s literature curriculum.

It would be beneficial to students if they had more minority literature courses to choose from and if faculty had a deeper book list to choose from for each class, she said.

“I wish we had some different options,” Jackson said.

Jackson, who teaches Diverse Voices in Literature, said there was a lot of ground to cover in that one-semester class. The task is to read work by Asian, Hispanic, American Indian and black American authors. She draws upon a district-approved book list.

Among other works, the students are expected to study “The House on Mango Street,” by Sandra Cisneros; “A Raisin in the Sun,” by Lorraine Hansberry; “Black Elk Speaks,” by John Neihardt; and “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan.

But the semester ended before students got to Tan’s book, which points to the challenge of covering a stack of minority literature in a single, half-year class.

Lawrence High School senior-to-be Scott Howard writes a journal entry during his summer literature class. Incoming school board member Leonard Ortiz says he believes high schools are spending too much time studying European literature as opposed to a broader, more diverse look at other parts of the world.

Dea Juan Boggs, a sophomore at Free State High School, said he wasn’t troubled about English courses available to students.

“I wouldn’t mind if there were other things in English classes,” said Boggs, who is black, but “I’m OK with the way it is.”

Falling behind?

However, Ortiz said he was concerned the district’s approach to minority literature could short-change graduates once they reached college.

Growing ethnic diversity in the United States demands high school courses flexible enough for students to see outlines of other cultures, he said.

“We need to respond to the demographic changes that are taking place to make our students competitive,” Ortiz said.

Michael Johnson, director of the freshman and sophomore English program at KU, said he had a slightly different perspective. Limited exposure to minority writers in high school wasn’t necessarily a fatal flaw, he said.

“I don’t feel particularly alarmed,” he said. “They don’t need to have that much before they get here.”

But if literature instruction stops at 12th grade, he said, “that is cause for concern.”

Bud Hirsch, KU director of undergraduate studies in English, said some high schools students arrived on campus with an excellent background in minority literature. Others are lacking, he said.

He’s had students who were stunned to learn American Indian literature was an academic specialty.

“When I introduce them to the kinds of things written by contemporary Native American writers, it’s a real eye-opener,” he said.

He said there were tangible benefits to taking more high school or college courses in minority literature.

“My sense is that students who have had some exposure to minority literature have a greater awareness that there are other people in the world and other ways of seeing things,” Hirsch said.