While students were on their holiday break, Arizona issued a disturbing wake-up call to anyone who thought the education system had evolved to reflect America's diversity. In a legal challenge to a controversial law passed in 2010, an administrative law judge pummeled a flagship educational initiative by supporting restrictions on programs based on Latino history and culture.
The judge decided that the curriculum used in Tucson's Mexican American studies programs was biased against white people, apparently because it advocates critical historical perspectives and emphasizes struggles of indigenous and Latino communities, as well as the links between that legacy and contemporary politics. The ruling comes as no surprise, as the struggle between the school district and school superintendent John Huppenthal has been dragging on for months. The focus now is on a pending federal lawsuit aimed at halting the law.
CNN quotes from ruling:
In Tuesday's ruling, administrative law judge Lewis Kowal said the auditors observed only a limited number of classes. He added, "Teaching oppression objectively is quite different than actively presenting material in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.""Teaching in such a manner promotes social or political activism against the white people, promotes racial resentment, and advocates ethnic solidarity, instead of treating pupils as individuals," Kowal wrote. He cited a lesson that taught students that the historic treatment of Mexican-Americans was "marked by the use of force, fraud and exploitation," and a parent's complaint that one of her daughters, who was white, was shunned by Latino classmates after a government course was taught "in an extremely biased manner."
Because for students to learn about the many atrocities strewn along the path of Manifest Destiny would upset the national narrative of continual social progress, rugged individualism, and free enterprise. And once the veneer of triumphalism begins to crack, students might start to use their often-neglected critical intellect to unravel myths of "personal responsibility" and "equal opportunity" that have propped up neoliberal dreams for the past few generations.
The ruling's ideological rationale encapsulates the political fictions fueling ethnocentrism in public schools. That's precisely why many students yearn for education that pushes past negative media portrayals and stereotypes of people of color (and they're willing to agitate for it). Tucson high school student Korina Lopez, whose father teachers in the district, told Democracy Now!, "It's very important to me because I know that it teaches a deeper understanding of history and the things you learn. And it just gives you a whole new appreciation of your community and society."
Ethnic studies in public schools has long been under siege. Though the programs have flourished, enrolling hundreds of elementary, middle and high school students, the law, HB 2281, aimed explicitly to penalize educators that have fought to introduce more critical pedagogy.
According to the federal legal complaint filed by ethnic studies advocates and teachers this fall, the state's then-school superintendent Tom Horne declared that the Mexican-American Studies Department of Tucson's No. 1 unified school district "[p]romotes the overthrow of the United States Government."
The witchhunt rhetoric surrounding the program reflects the overarching paradox of the state's charge of "bias" in ethnic studies. A glance at the demographic structure of Tucson's school system shows that individual opportunity doesn't exactly thrive in communities riven by deeply rooted racial and economic segregation.
The Arizona government's preference for "teaching oppression objectively" certainly plays out in ironic ways. Authorities have no qualms displaying their own biases when it comes to policing schools and communities. The most glaring example is SB 1070, the law that would encourage the profiling and detention of suspected undocumented immigrants. The state has also marginalized teachers who fell short of "fluency" standards--i.e. people with Spanish accents who teach kids with limited English. At one school in Phoenix, reported the Wall Street Journal last year, "State auditors have reported to the district that some teachers pronounce words such as violet as 'biolet,' think as 'tink' and swallow the ending sounds of words, as they sometimes do in Spanish."
If only more Arizona officials had been schooled in the very programs that they seek to outlaw. According to the Save Ethnic Studies campaign, the programs have proven effective not only at supporting academic performance in the conventional sense--higher graduation rates and test scores--but helping close the profound "achievement gaps" that plague low-income communities of color. The campaign stresses that the ethnic studies model incubated in Tucson has become a national model:
98 percent of the students say they do homework at night to keep up with the next day's class. 95 percent discuss what their learning with their parents. Students have given reports to the TUSD board, Pima County Board of Supervisors, the Arizona state legislature, the Black Congressional Caucus and the Hispanic Congressional Caucus."There's a big myth up there that these classes are about immigration", says Augustine Romero, Director of Student Equity at TUSD. "It's actually about analyzing problems in the real world and addressing those problems by coming up with solutions."
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Pamela Powers Hannley: Tucson School Board To Decide On Mexican American Studies Program
Dear Friends & Neighbors,
Our TUSD Governing Board, under the power & influence of state politically motivated extremists, has succumbed even further into Arizona’s ever-increasing abyss of scandalous political oppression! Despite a costly state-funded independent firm investigation stating that Ethnic Studies was in compliance and excelling in the graduation rate, our own State & School Board chose to ignore these official findings and have moved closer to depriving a native people of their freedom and liberty in eliminating Southwest American History (Ethnic Studies/ Mexican American History). We have reached a “Moment of Truth” where our Tucson community could suffer a civil rights setback so we urgently need your help! If there is ever a time when we need the community to stand up and peacefully support American Civil Rights, it is now! Please spread the word and attend the next TUSD Board Meeting. Show your support of our invaluable Southwest American History (Ethnic Studies)! Only Together and United can we enlighten the darkness at TUSD!
5:30pm-9:00pm
Tuesday, January 10th
TUSD Administration Building
1010 E. 10th Street, Tucson, AZ 85719
(2 Blocks East from the Northeast corner of Broadway/Euclid)
Don’t forget to bring signs, noise-makers, candles, flashlights to enlighten the darkness!
When you achieve all you want to achieve, and school is no better, try to move on.
The problem with schooling in the modern era is not the curriculum, the teachers or the kids. It's not the providers or the managers or those in charge or the budget-cutters.
It is the school itself. The institution of the school was developed to suit the needs of an industrial society. A post-industrial society has to move on or die.
You are trapped in modernity with your right-on agenda.
You are not part of the solution - you are the problem. And you know what makes it worse? You are up to high doh in ethics. School is junk. Schools should be destroyed. Time for post-school society. You are the unwitting servant of those who keep the people in servitude. Now do not let me keep you away from your trivial gradualism.
In NYC, we have ethnic studies of every type, of many countries. The debate it encourages is healthy. My son recently read Sherman Alexie's short stories on the white oppression of Indians. He is American, but he didn't walk away with the thought that he shouldn't study a subject simply because it did not shed kind light on his people. Rather, it made him think and let him understand, deeply, both sides.
So who are you calling backwards? Someone who is blinded by one's superiority of racial history or a knowledge that no country that became a power, did it on the backs and scalps of others.
I'm generally not supportive of the psychotic right wing agenda that has usurped Arizona Public Education. I support the DREAM Act and believe in increasing the education budget significantly.
But countering one perceived bias with an equal and opposite bias solves nothing.
I'm thankful and respect that AZ BofE makes their prejudice so transparent "...........the Mexican-American Studies Department of Tucson's No. 1 unified school district "[p]romotes the overthrow of the United States Government."
Amazing.
Especially considering that the geographic area now known as AZ USED to be part of the origional country Mexico.
AZ has officially "jumped the shark." What next? Red white and green triangles to be worn at all times? Outlawing of the Spanish language? Loyalty oaths?
And what the heck do you mean it was part of the original country of Mexico??? That does not make sense as it was originally part of the Apache Nation and other native Arizona tribes. I think you are confused.
Didn't pay attention during History class, eh ...?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1810_Tardieu_Map_of_Mexico,_Texas_and_California_-_Geographicus_-_Mexique-tardieu-1810.jpg
Furthermore, the white perspective, like the one you just mentioned about whites NOT being discriminatory and whites being on the side of justice, is also taught... because as you just mentioned, not all whites were slave owners in history.
Read this article about what is really going on with the Ethnic Studies ban in Arizona... it was written by a white guy:
http://www.timwise.org/2011/12/telling-white-lies-patriotic-correctness-and-the-war-on-ethnic-studies/
"Imagine: oppression being an emotionally-charged or even political subject."
Mr. Wise seems to imply that all attempts to remain academically dispassionate on historical subjects should be thrown out. A historical subject's nature does not invalidate the calling of academic integrity to teach the facts, without an excess of emotion.
"No, it is only the brown-skinned who will be denied the ability to learn their history from the perspective of their own people."
The phrase "their own people" sends a chill down my spine. This ancient lie that ancestry and melanin content should be treated as anything more than mere coincidence is the greatest driver for the "us vs. them" dichotomy that causes most of the world's problems.
Mr. Wise says it's wrong to say that American's experience life as individuals; and he's right. His ostensible condemnation of individualism and belief that this racial division is the natural (and by implication, proper) way of things is terrifying. We are all humans. Race is merely a quirk of genetics and environmental factors. It's beyond absurd to believe it should be seen as more.
I quite liked much of the rest though; in particular, the term "patriotic correctness", and his account of conservative "history". The MAS classes I saw in High School were like an inverse version of this history (Latinos are a suppressed, culturally superior race to whites; never outright spoken, but unmistakably implied in the teachers tone and style).
They wanted to produce no books, lesson plans, student work or course materials. Instead of random students being interviewed, they carefully chose who they let the investigators talk to.
This matter needs to go to a higher court and be blocked until then. If they are having to try so hard to hide what they are teaching, there is good reason for them to worry it will be banned, and rightly so. Teaching separatism is not something the public schools should be engaging in.
The real question is whether or not that state law is an infringement upon First Amendment free speech and/or otherwise an unconstitutional law. That matter is in front of federal District Court judge and a ruling is expected any day now.
And from where are you getting the idea that they wanted to hide their lessons plans, books & course materials?
The law permits the state to withhold up to 10-percent of its contribution to the Tuscon School District until the MAS program is brought into compliance.
/sarcasm
(I say 'more impartial' because I realize there is no such thing as 100 percent impartial.)
http://www.timwise.org/2011/12/telling-white-lies-patriotic-correctness-and-the-war-on-ethnic-studies/
Judicial findings prove underlying issues of racial discrimination led to the Gilbert Public Schools debacle that will unfold in the near future in public hearings. For almost a year, Gilbert Public Schools officials rejected this teacher’s every plea to remedy illegal conduct. People clinging to power in Gilbert Public Schools were singled out by the judge whose findings proved racial discrimination. Gilbert Public Schools didn’t contest the judge’s findings or even try to clean up the discriminatory environment. http://westernconnections.com/
Nowhere in either school district controversy does a person in power explain how their civil rights witch hunts are in the best interests of students, which by law must be the first and foremost reason for their official actions. The new generation must bring light against this darkness for the sake of the generation to follow.
As the December 2nd deadline approached, Superintendent Dave Allison emailed: "If you do not accept the outlined conditions ... I will recommend to the Governing Board that they adapt [sic] the statement of charges against you at the December 6, 2011 regularly scheduled governing board meeting."
Superintendent Dave Allison turned up the pressure just before the deadline: "Should the Governing Board vote to issue a Notice of Intent to Dismiss to you, the Statement of Charges will immediately become a public record."
The deadline passed, and the superintendent made the charges public, thus ending any chance to resolve bullying and racial discrimination within school district channels.
There's a lesson here -- maybe it's something in the water in Arizona that forced an action taken in haste without a fallback position. The die is cast.
At that time we thought the "mainstreaming" and "integration" were really good things.
I guess that is badly out of date today.
Expecting a teacher of a language to have native fluency and pronunciation in that language.
That's so, so, out of date. It's like expecting math teachers to be good at math.
As the Beattles taught us, "All you need is love, love, love". [http://allspriit.co.uk/allyouneed.html]
How much more empathy the teacher can experience, if she herself has limited knowledge of English.