The Quiet Politics of School Holidays

Cesar Chavez speaking in Los Angeles. (Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times)

School holidays are not neutral. They are signals about what we choose to elevate, and what we set aside.

When schools drop Presidents' Day but keep Cesar Chavez Day, that is not just a calendar decision; it’s a value judgement. 

But more than that, it reflects our changing relationship with history itself.

To begin with, neither holiday is required. Although Presidents' Day is a federal holiday, schools are not obligated to close. Cesar Chavez Day is only a California state holiday, not a national mandate. Colleges are required to grant at least one off to students. That means when a university chooses one over the other, it is making a deliberate decision about what deserves recognition.

The real question, then, is not procedural. It is philosophical: what should a public holiday represent?

Not all historical impact is remembered in the same way. Some figures and institutions come to represent the enduring structure of the nation: its continuity, its governing framework, its identity across time. Others are tied more closely to specific movements, causes, or communities, even when their contributions are meaningful and far-reaching.

In recent years, there has been growing discomfort with honoring traditional figures of authority, especially political ones. The presidency, in particular, can feel less like a symbol of unity and more like a reflection of division. For some, stepping away from Presidents’ Day may feel like a way of distancing themselves from that tension.

But stepping away is not the same as understanding. 

Presidents' Day, at its broadest, symbolizes the presidency itself. To recognize it is not to endorse every president, nor to ignore their many controversies. It is to acknowledge that the office, however imperfect, has played a central role in shaping the country since 1789. In other words, the Presidency as an institution can be understood separately from the broader actions and history of the nation as a whole. 

Cesar Chavez’s legacy is different. It is rooted in a specific movement: the struggle for farmworker rights. That movement was pivotal, and its effects reached beyond any single group. But it was also the result of collective action: thousands of workers organizing, resisting, and advocating for change.

That raises a harder question: when we attach a movement to a single individual, what gets lost?

This is not a critique unique to Chavez. It is a broader tension in how we remember history. Movements are complex, collective, and often internally contested. Turning them into a single name risks flattening that complexity into something more symbolic than accurate. Farmworker rights were not the work of one person. When we attach a movement to a single individual, we simplify something that was never simple. We turn a shared struggle into a personal narrative. In doing so, we risk misunderstanding the very history we are trying to honor.

It is important to acknowledge, however, that there are times when individual figures do come to stand in for broader national transformations. Martin Luther King Jr. is one such case. The Civil Rights Movement was collective, but King’s leadership became closely associated with a shift that reshaped laws, institutions, and America’s understanding of equality. His legacy came to represent not just a cause, but a defining turning point in the nation’s moral and legal framework. Similar to King, several presidents steered the country toward incredibly momentous accomplishments: Washington’s founding, Lincoln’s war against slavery, and FDR’s leadership during the Second World War. These are national and global turning points worthy of recognition. 

That distinction is not to diminish the contributions of the United Farm Workers. It does raise the question: which has left a more influential mark on America? The Office of the Presidency or Cesar Chavez?

And this question becomes even more important when a legacy begins to shift.

Recent reporting has brought forward serious allegations regarding Chavez’s personal conduct. Chavez has been accused of sexually abusing girls working in the United Farm Workers union, and even raping and impregnating one of the movement’s founders. These claims are still being examined, but they have already caused organizations connected to his legacy to reconsider how he is publicly honored. Despite this progress, the Claremont Colleges are on track to continue honoring Cesar Chavez Day. As today’s national landscape makes clear, public figures with serious sexual assault allegations seem to be immune to consequence (or impeachment).  

Classrooms are where complexity belongs. That is where students can engage with figures like Chavez in full:  learning about both their public impact and private controversy. A day off sends a simpler yet more meaningful message of approval over nuanced analysis. In that sense, the issue is not just how we teach historical figures, but how we choose to publicly recognize them.

This does not mean that a school holiday requires unanimous approval, but what is chosen carries symbolic weight. When institutions replace one day of recognition with another, they are not just changing who is honored. They are redefining what counts as worthy of being honored in the first place.

This redefinition reflects a shift, not just in who we honor, but in how we understand history itself.

That is a shift worth thinking about carefully. A calendar is never just a schedule.

It is a quiet argument about history: one that we absorb without always being asked to examine.