Students Write a Bill on Ethnicity : Education: Alhambra High group drafts measure requiring a class in multicultural awareness for graduation in California. The proposal is now in the Legislature.

Concerned about why they cannot all just get along, students at Alhambra High School have written and offered a bill that would require students in California to take a class in multicultural awareness before graduating from high school.

About 60 teen-agers at the school--which is 90% minority in a school district that has been plagued with racial tensions and occasional violence--spent last semester researching and drafting the bill with help from their social studies teachers.

Now it is being carried in the Legislature by Assemblywoman Diane Martinez (D-Alhambra).

The bill calls for students to complete 40 hours of multicultural studies, addressing such topics as the contributions made to American society by many cultures, how current events are shaped by multiracial and multiethnic conflict and cultural sensitivities.

“On campus, people hang around with their own race, there’s not a lot of intermingling,” said Steven Jong, a 17-year-old senior who worked on the bill. “If this is a requirement, students will get involved with others in a classroom setting, which is important because in life you’re not just going to be hanging out with your own race.”

Also supporting the bill are Democrats from the Los Angeles area in both houses of the state Legislature, including Sen. Art Torres, Sen. Diane Watson and Assembly members Marguerite Archie-Hudson, Marta Escutia, Gwen Moore and Grace Napolitano.

On Tuesday, Alhambra students met in a campus courtyard to make a three-minute promotional video for the bill that will be aired at the state-sponsored Education Summit in San Francisco Feb. 15 and 16. Several students will also attend the summit to explain why their idea deserves support.

But the bill is also expected to stir controversy.

“I think it’s a perfect example of politically correct thinking that will worsen the problems we have in our school system,” says David Horowitz, a conservative activist who helps edit a magazine called Heterodoxy. “The most important thing now is to stress that we’re all Americans first and to teach kids the common American culture.”

The seniors who drafted the bill will no longer be in high school if it becomes law. The measure must first go through Assembly subcommittees, then to the state Senate, before making its way to the governor’s office for his signature.

However, Martinez, who has a 16-year-old daughter in the Alhambra school district, said she is optimistic and adds that the student-composed bill impressed her more than some bills written by legislators in Sacramento.

“It’s compelling because it came from a multicultural group of students who came together and said this is what we need instead of leaving it up to a bunch of adults in Sacramento to tell them what they need,” Martinez said.

The idea for the multicultural class requirement began in September, when Martinez met with students and offered to carry a student-written bill that would address the concerns of young people. The teen-agers met after class and discussed and discarded about 20 ideas--including requiring seat belts on buses and legislating community service for high school students--before settling on the multicultural theme.

While the California educational framework already requires teachers to weave multicultural ideas throughout language arts and social studies courses, some believe that a more direct and concentrated approach is needed.

“The majority of students are so scared to talk about their culture to most people, they’ll think people will think they are racist,” said Marina Cervantes, a 17-year-old senior who worked on the bill.

Some multicultural experts concur.

“Unfortunately, these issues are not being addressed properly in the framework,” said Chuck Acosta, a bilingual consultant for the Los Angeles County Office of Education. “We’re supposed to cover the contributions to society of all ethnic groups but we all know that just doesn’t happen.”

John McCrea, chairman of Alhambra High School’s social sciences department and a driving force behind the project, said it is almost impossible to monitor whether teachers are observing the new framework.

He concedes that some students and school districts probably will object to the idea of yet one more graduation requirement but he said that it will provide needed focus on important issues.

The bill would give individual districts discretion to create an entirely new class or to incorporate the requirement into other classes. But even if it dies in Sacramento, students and educators connected with the project say it has been a valuable teaching tool.

“The more we can put kids outside the classroom and give them real-life experiences the more they’re going to learn,” Alhambra High School Principal Julie Hadden said.