Come Monday, students studying Spanish at Northview High School in north Fulton County will have piñatas in their classrooms, eat Mexican food, do some research and maybe play some games.

At Dunwoody Springs Elementary School, children in kindergarten will make mini-piñatas while older students will make miniature serapes. The school's parents have been invited to a lunch that includes chicken enchiladas, rice and corn.

Similar scenes will likely play out in other schools throughout metro Atlanta.

Coupled with classroom lessons, the activities are designed to teach children a piece of Mexican history. Monday is Cinco de Mayo, the anniversary of the May 5, 1862, Battle of Puebla, when troops of an outgunned and outmanned Mexican army defeated a mighty French force.

Although it is considered a minor federal holiday in Mexico, in the United States, Cinco de Mayo, or the Fifth of May, has taken on a life of its own. Beer and alcohol companies sponsor major entertainment events in areas with large Mexican or Mexican-American populations.

Schools in the metro area have added the day to cultural calendars that include Black History Month, International Women's Day and Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, which is also in May. They use the periods to teach slices of American life or world history.

"I want them to understand what it's all about -- that it's not Mexican Independence Day," said Susan Johnson, a Spanish teacher at Northview High School. "I want them to understand what is behind the holiday."

But educators are concerned that too much emphasis on the food-flags-fiesta aspects of history trivializes those very events.

"Cinco de Mayo is a holiday that has consequence as far as the United States goes," said Asa Hilliard, Georgia State University's Fuller E. Callaway professor of urban education. France, Spain and England invaded Mexico because the country stopped paying its debts. Spain and England eventually withdrew when they decided France was intent on building its empire in the hemisphere rather than collecting a debt.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, although sympathetic to the Mexican cause, could not help because the United States was fighting its own Civil War. But the Battle of Puebla delayed French victory in Mexico, ensuring that the European power could not get involved in the United States' internal conflict.

The battle "kept the U.S. Army from having to fight in that southern border and allowed them to concentrate their energies on the Civil War," Hilliard said.

The French eventually defeated the Mexicans, and Napoleon III installed Hapsburg Archduke Maximilian of Austria as Mexico's ruler in 1864. The French occupation lasted until 1867, when the United States, its Civil War over, was able to send military aid.

'Pivotal events'

The Battle of Puebla -- and the eventual expulsion of France from Mexico -- "stopped further French incursions" in the Americas. "These events were pivotal events. They are not trivial," Hilliard said.

Often, though, what happens during designated "diversity" months is that children get facts with very little sense of how they are connected, he said.

Instead of Black History Month, for example, the role of Africa and African-Americans should be part of school curriculums across the board -- from math and science to art and literature, Hilliard said, "so that they can get beyond the songs and dances and the February list of heroes."

Felix Matos Rodriguez suggested that events such as the Battle of Puebla and the French occupation of Mexico be taught by connecting the historical events to current affairs.

Schools can take "a very local element to give a broader sense of Mexican history," said Matos Rodriguez, associate professor of Africana & Puerto Rican/Latino studies at Hunter College in New York. "Initiate a comparison with issues associated with the war in Iraq. Make the students write about that. It becomes very powerful and educational."

Still, interest in Hispanics in general and Mexican history in particular is welcome, said Luis J. Perez-Eguiarte, president of the Mexican American Business Chamber-Atlanta Inc.

"I think it is opening up the horizon of kids to new cultures, new traditions," Perez-Eguiarte said. The lesson of the day should be "what it really meant and what really happened."

It's an approach that is gaining some acceptance in metro area schools. Gwinnett County schools, for example, asked Asian-American leaders for help when they were teaching about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, said Roger Ozaki, coordinator of testing for Georgia Perimeter College at the Gwinnett University Center.

The speaker, Margaret Nakano, who is in her 70s, was very well received, Ozaki said.

"It was really interesting, and it brought the focus to something that they had read about or heard about. People read history books [but] it's not alive until they hear it firsthand," Ozaki said.

Making lessons real

Some schools, such as Garden Hills Elementary School in Buckhead, weave disciplines together.

For example, students using a reading program called Sequoyah are introduced to a historical person -- the man who invented the Cherokee alphabet, said Josef Nix, an interpreter and tutor at the school.

The lessons make Sequoyah real so that students don't have the image of an "Indian in a loincloth," Nix said.

The enrollment at Garden Hills is about 50 percent Hispanic, and it also has students from all over the world. It is not planning anything particularly special for Cinco de Mayo.

But during Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15), Garden Hills children learned about the Islamic influence on Spanish culture -- much of which later permeated Latin American culture, Nix said.

Special events and hands-on activities help children retain what they are learning, said Blair Jordan, whose daughter is studying Mexico in her first-grade class at Dunwoody Springs. The school has nearly 700 children, and 36 countries are represented in the student body.

"I think kids retain more [that way] than if you just lecture to them or if they are reading from a book," Jordan said. "It makes her become more aware of other people's culture and prompts her to ask questions about her own history."

• ON THE WEB: Georgia's Department of Education has online lesson plans for various subjects with links to other sites on the Internet. Visit: www.glc.k12.ga.us/news