Three state Assembly members are asking students to get involved in rewriting California’s 10th grade world history textbooks — and offering  cash prizes too.

The legislators, Katcho Achadjian, Adrin Nazarian, and Scott Wilk, want a new section written about the Armenian genocide of no more than 500 words, possibly for inclusion in a new 10th grade history textbook, according to a press release.

“It’s a really sad thing that happened to Armenians and not a lot of people know about it and it’s a it’s a good thing to learn about and be more knowledgeable about Armenians and the country,” said Aleck Mardirossian (10), who is Armenian and attends SJHHS.

“The fact that I am Armenian and it’s my culture and I want people to learn about it and to know what happened to the Armenians,” said Mardirossian.

The contest, which also involves students creating a social media campaign, comes at a time when textbooks are about to be written by publishers who must address the new history “framework.” California and Texas are the biggest textbook buyers in the country, so what they decide will have a bearing on what is available in other states.

A draft of the new History and Social Science Framework was approved on Nov. 20, 2015, but didn’t gain much attention. It’s a broad draft of what subjects teachers will address in the classroom.

Since its release recent immigrant groups have appeared before committees working on the document to attempt to influence how their stories will be taught in public schools, according to the Los Angeles Times.

For example, a few lines about teaching the subject of “comfort women” during World War II “as an example of institutionalized sexual slavery, and one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century” drew attention from both the Korean and Japanese communities.

Comfort women were “The women… who were coerced into sexual slavery in wartime brothels for Japanese soldiers during World War II.”

To reflect more positively on Japanese history and their current community, it was suggested by a Japanese newspaper, Sankei, that the women be referred to as “well-paid prostitutes” and pointed out that they also served Allied troops in Japan immediately after the war,” according to the Times.

The controversy over how to properly teach a wide variety of topics relating to different ethnic groups to high schools in California will probably continue, sparking various campaigns like the Armenian Genocide essay contest.

“I would want it to be in the textbooks. We have been trying to get that to happen for a long time, and now that this is happening I want to jump on it,” said Mardirossian.

The framework obviously leaves room for teachers to let their preferences and preferred teaching methods guide discussions, but the core focus is still being debated in order to correctly represent history and culture.

Because of California’s multicultural population, it seems difficult create a completely neutral way  to teach topics that may offend certain groups. In the quest to remain as historically accurate as possible, many historians are still trying to learn and elaborate on many topics that are specified in the guideline, and the comfort women and Armenians are included.

The existence many sub-cultures in California brings the struggle to correctly appease all of them to the forefront. But the representation of these cultures must, first, be presented in an historically accurate way so new generations can learn.