Jeff Biggers
January 14, 2012.
Arizona's ban on ethnic studies proscribes Mexican-American history, local authors, even Shakespeare
As part of the state-mandated termination of its ethnic studies program, the Tucson Unified School District released an initial list of books to be banned from its schools today. According to district spokeperson Cara Rene, the books “will be cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage.”
Facing a multimillion-dollar penalty in state funds, the governing board of Tucson’s largest school district officially ended the 13-year-old program on Tuesday in an attempt to come into compliance with the controversial state ban on the teaching of ethnic studies.
The list of removed books includes the 20-year-old textbook “Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years,” which features an essay by Tucson author Leslie Silko. Recipient of a Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, Silko has been an outspoken supporter of the ethnic studies program.
“By ordering teachers to remove ‘Rethinking Columbus,’ the Tucson school district has shown tremendous disrespect for teachers and students,” said the book’s editor Bill Bigelow. “This is a book that has sold over 300,000 copies and is used in school districts from Anchorage to Atlanta, and from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine. It offers teaching strategies and readings that teachers can use to help students think about the perspectives that are too often silenced in the traditional curriculum.”
Another notable text removed from Tucson’s classrooms is Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest.” In a meeting this week, administrators informed Mexican-American studies teachers to stay away from any units where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes,” including the teaching of Shakespeare’s classic in Mexican-American literature courses.
Other banned books include “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by famed Brazilian educator Paolo Freire and “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos” by Rodolfo Acuña, two books often singled out by Arizona state superintendent of public instruction John Huppenthal, who campaigned in 2010 on the promise to “stop la raza.” Huppenthal, who once lectured state educators that he based his own school principles for children on corporate management schemes of the Fortune 500, compared Mexican-American studies to Hitler Jugend indoctrination last fall.
An independent audit of Tucson’s ethnic studies program commissioned by Huppenthal last summer actually praised “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos,” a 40-year-old textbook now in its seventh edition. According to the audit: “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos is an unbiased, factual textbook designed to accommodate the growing number of Mexican-American or Chicano History Courses. The auditing team refuted a number of allegations about the book, saying, ‘quotes have been taken out of context.’”
Freire’s work on pedagogy has been translated into numerous languages, and is taught at universities around the United States.
In a school district founded by a Mexican-American in which more than 60 percent of the students come from Mexican-American backgrounds, the administration also removed every textbook dealing with Mexican-American history, including “Chicano!: The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement” by Arturo Rosales, which features a biography of longtime Tucson educator Salomon Baldenegro. Other books removed from the school include “500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures,” by Elizabeth Martinez and the textbook “Critical Race Theory” by scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.
“The only other time a book of mine was banned was in 1986, when the apartheid government in South Africa banned ‘Strangers in Their Own Country,’ a curriculum I’d written that included a speech by then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela,” said Bigelow, who serves as curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine, and co-directs the online Zinn Education Project. ”We know what the South African regime was afraid of. What is the Tucson school district afraid of?”
Jeff Biggers, the author most recently of "Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland," is currently at work on a new book on Arizona politics and history. More Jeff Biggers
How is it possible to ban educational programs and books politically deemed to be unfriendly to white settlers by white settlers? This is dangerous territory.
What is next? Ban ethnic studies programs at universities ... oh yeah that is happening already.
A few years ago I was offered a position at a university in Arizona to teach Black/African Studies. I decided against it because I was looking for a more vibrant intellectual community.
Ummmm so I decided to accept a position at a so called university in Mafikeng, South Africa. Yeah I know I am a dumb ass but hey I would be unemployed now in Phoenix or close to it, no?
And if you even thinking I am ostensibly unemployed anyway in the rainbow delusion where 'intellectual' is not even a word then - ummmm, I am not feeling you.
I should give Bill Bigelow a call in Portland and update him on how books are 'banned' in the post-apartheid state. (See Bill Bigelow's post: "Rethinking Columbus Banned in Tucson")
In South Africa we do not have to literally ban books or intellectual ideas. No-one reads in South Africa. And when they do read it is not books.
It is estimated that less than one percent of South Africans buy books (and whites make up the largest proportion of those who buy books)! The rest of us are too busy being free to care about the substance of freedom.
Our president boasts a primary/grade school education and if you have ever watched him struggle to read a prepared speech you will know it shows.
Thankfully, literacy is not a requirement to be a politician in the post era. And you can be a professor in the employ of the government without being able to write a coherent paragraph in any language.
Inside such a system the government does not have to worry about the power of critical ideas. The only ideas that are floating through the halls of this government are the ones given to them by the apartheid regime and white liberals.
So no need to ban books and critical ideas here in the rainbow delusion ... illiteracy is freedom! Viva illiteracy. Viva Malema.
Oh yeah, if you have not read Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" - what you waiting for? ;0)
Onward! to more illiterate insanity.
Another notable text removed from Tucson’s classrooms is Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest.” In a meeting this week, administrators informed Mexican-American studies teachers to stay away from any units where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes,” including the teaching of Shakespeare’s classic in Mexican-American literature courses.
Other banned books include “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by famed Brazilian educator Paolo Freire and “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos” by Rodolfo Acuña, two books often singled out by Arizona state superintendent of public instruction John Huppenthal, who campaigned in 2010 on the promise to “stop la raza.” Huppenthal, who once lectured state educators that he based his own school principles for children on corporate management schemes of the Fortune 500, compared Mexican-American studies to Hitler Jugend indoctrination last fall.
An independent audit of Tucson’s ethnic studies program commissioned by Huppenthal last summer actually praised “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos,” a 40-year-old textbook now in its seventh edition. According to the audit: “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos is an unbiased, factual textbook designed to accommodate the growing number of Mexican-American or Chicano History Courses. The auditing team refuted a number of allegations about the book, saying, ‘quotes have been taken out of context.’”
Freire’s work on pedagogy has been translated into numerous languages, and is taught at universities around the United States.
In a school district founded by a Mexican-American in which more than 60 percent of the students come from Mexican-American backgrounds, the administration also removed every textbook dealing with Mexican-American history, including “Chicano!: The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement” by Arturo Rosales, which features a biography of longtime Tucson educator Salomon Baldenegro. Other books removed from the school include “500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures,” by Elizabeth Martinez and the textbook “Critical Race Theory” by scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.
“The only other time a book of mine was banned was in 1986, when the apartheid government in South Africa banned ‘Strangers in Their Own Country,’ a curriculum I’d written that included a speech by then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela,” said Bigelow, who serves as curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine, and co-directs the online Zinn Education Project. ”We know what the South African regime was afraid of. What is the Tucson school district afraid of?”
Jeff Biggers, the author most recently of "Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland," is currently at work on a new book on Arizona politics and history. More Jeff Biggers
*****
Comment: There is not enough aspirin in the whole state of Arizona to make my head feel better.How is it possible to ban educational programs and books politically deemed to be unfriendly to white settlers by white settlers? This is dangerous territory.
What is next? Ban ethnic studies programs at universities ... oh yeah that is happening already.
A few years ago I was offered a position at a university in Arizona to teach Black/African Studies. I decided against it because I was looking for a more vibrant intellectual community.
Ummmm so I decided to accept a position at a so called university in Mafikeng, South Africa. Yeah I know I am a dumb ass but hey I would be unemployed now in Phoenix or close to it, no?
And if you even thinking I am ostensibly unemployed anyway in the rainbow delusion where 'intellectual' is not even a word then - ummmm, I am not feeling you.
I should give Bill Bigelow a call in Portland and update him on how books are 'banned' in the post-apartheid state. (See Bill Bigelow's post: "Rethinking Columbus Banned in Tucson")
In South Africa we do not have to literally ban books or intellectual ideas. No-one reads in South Africa. And when they do read it is not books.
It is estimated that less than one percent of South Africans buy books (and whites make up the largest proportion of those who buy books)! The rest of us are too busy being free to care about the substance of freedom.
Our president boasts a primary/grade school education and if you have ever watched him struggle to read a prepared speech you will know it shows.
Thankfully, literacy is not a requirement to be a politician in the post era. And you can be a professor in the employ of the government without being able to write a coherent paragraph in any language.
Inside such a system the government does not have to worry about the power of critical ideas. The only ideas that are floating through the halls of this government are the ones given to them by the apartheid regime and white liberals.
So no need to ban books and critical ideas here in the rainbow delusion ... illiteracy is freedom! Viva illiteracy. Viva Malema.
Oh yeah, if you have not read Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" - what you waiting for? ;0)
Onward! to more illiterate insanity.
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