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New Arizona Bill Goes After Latino Studies Programs

Posted May 4, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Hate Watch

The Arizona legislature has passed another bill aimed at the Latino community. This one targets a Latino Studies program at Tuscon’s high schools.

According to the Washington Post, the bill:

States that the Legislature finds and declares that public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.

Prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:

Promote the overthrow of the United States government.

Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.

Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

Now you might wonder what courses promote the overthrow of the U.S. government in Tuscon.

So does Sean Arce, the head of Tuscon’s Mexican-American Studies Department, who says his department not only doesn’t plot the overthrow of the U.S. government, it also doesn’t promote genocide. Here is what he told the Arizona Star:

“The way it is written, all of the provisions are pretty outlandish,” Arce said. “We don’t do those things, so in that sense, I do not believe it directly affects us.”

About 1,500 are taking a course or more from the department this year. These include a course on Latino writers in American literature and a course on Latinos in the Vietnam War.

Arce told the Arizona Star:

“I think students need to know that their ancestors, many of their parents, great grandparents, have contributed to this great nation,. If the students see themselves in the curriculum, they know that school is for and about them.”

The report in the Star continues:

But Tom Horne, the state superintendent of public instruction, said the bill has everything to do with TUSD, and he has fought for years to ban the district’s ethnic-studies programs.

“Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds,” Horne said. “That is consistent with the fundamental American value that we are all individuals, not exemplars of whatever ethnic groups we were born into. Ethnic-studies programs teach the opposite and are designed to promote ethnic chauvinism.”

Arce disagrees, saying the TUSD courses are a more inclusive approach to education.

“It demonstrates that when we talk about historical and social experiences, students see themselves in the literature and have a more open outlook on their own culture and the cultures of others,” Arce said.

The TUSD courses are open to all students.

Defenders of the program say that general American history, which focuses on the East Coast, tends to ignore the experiences of the Latino community, offering few clues for the nearly 50% of the district’s students who are Latino about why their families are here. Also, most school districts around the country offer few books written by Latino authors in literature classes. The ethnic studies program is an attempt to remedy that.

Sen. Russell Pearce disagrees. He is the author of the bill that requires racial profiling by police. He told the Arizona Star; “History is one thing. Misinformation, hateful speech, sedition is not appropriate with my tax dollars.”

State Senator Lopez, an opponent of the bill, said that if we take the bill at its word, we may have to stop teaching about Pearl Harbor, the extermination of the Jews, slavery, 9-11 and other historical events because they might incline students to hate a group of people.

The Washington Post says that the state school superintendent is running for Attorney General and that he sees this attack on a school program as a way to get right with anti-Latino voters.

Tags : arizona, arizona boycott, sb 1070

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