Ethnic Studies

While the Daily Show brilliantly reminded millions of viewers last night of the disgraceful racist elements behind the attack on Tucson's acclaimed and now outlawed Mexican American Studies program, educators across the nation recalled a teaching moment.

While schools across the country celebrate United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez's March 31st birthday, Tucson students reassigned from the recently outlawed Mexican American Studies program will also be forced to deliberately ignore Arizona's most famous native son.

If the truth about who we are and what we've done makes people angry, do we really soothe that anger by covering up the truth?

As the fate of Tucson's MAS program lies within the slowly grinding gears of the court system, the protest-performance of the librotraficantes -- their call for direct action -- deserves the support of all who believe in justice.

Throughout the history of the U.S., in their role as social institutions, schools have reproduced the cultural norms, often with the attendant range of social inequities and dominant group privileges found within the larger society.

The questions beg: How much lower and blatantly racist will Tucson school officials go? Will Tucson community leaders, like Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, stand by and watch the reckless measures of "demagogic extremists"?

A remarkably diverse array of librarians, educators, writers, civil rights activists and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is mounting a series of national actions to call attention to educational and civil right violations and to support local Tucson efforts.

As the nation watches the Tucson Unified School District's spiral into disarray, hundreds of students have walked out of their Tucson schools today in a coordinated protest against the banishment of the district's acclaimed Mexican American Studies program.

If The Tempest is banned from the classroom as being "too controversial," I wonder when the Bill of Rights will be banned as well.

TUCSON, Ariz. -- A school district in Tucson voted to dismantle its ethnic studies program after more than $1 million of monthly state funding was to ...

"After taking Raza Studies in high school, I felt like it was my obligation to make sure to stay connected with the community and search for solutions in improving our local environment."

Analyzing problems in the real world and coming up with solutions. If officials think that's anathema to a sound education, they've given civil rights advocates the most principled argument yet for why ethnic studies is so vital for the next generation of leaders.

No other high school program in Arizona -- perhaps even the nation -- has gone through such scrutiny, investigation and media abuse and disinformation, as the Mexican-American Studies program in Tucson.

In a stunning breakdown of the Arizona's obsessive witch hunt, a motion filed by plaintiffs for the acclaimed Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies program delineates several areas of discrimination against Tucson's Latino community.

Have the extremist Arizona politicians and their Tea Party supporters gone too far in their witch hunt of the Ethnic Studies Program?

Speaking on a public panel in Phoenix on Saturday, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne invoked the infamous words of warfare by Roman statesman Cato and called for the destruction of Tucson's Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies Program.

As Tucson's largest school district battles against the state's Ethnic Studies witch hunt at an appeal hearing, a groundswell of students, parents and community members is calling for the resignation of the district's school board president.

As Tucson Unified School District students returned to the classroom yesterday, the towering role of one education innovator is being championed by a broad spectrum of local students, parents, teachers, community members and national scholars.

"Even the state-commissioned audit says La Raza Studies has been successful. They are doing something right and you would think that they would be curious and study it instead of trying to kill it. What this tells me is that they don't care if Mexican Americans learn."