In Arizona—where Confederate monuments continue to be on public display despite pleas from residents to have them removed—a trial over whether state Republicans intentionally discriminated against Latino students by ending a Mexican-American studies program in public schools started last week. Commemorating history is fine so long as it’s white history, apparently:
The Arizona trial strikes at the issue of how to teach students about race and social injustice in public schools that often exemplify the country’s inequality. After Arizona conservatives moved to eliminate the classes, Hispanic educators and activists have come to Tucson to champion the battle over ethnic studies as one of the country’s most pressing and under-the-radar civil rights issues.
“This was an innovative program, your honor,” Jim Quinn, a lawyer representing Tucson students, told Judge Tashmina. “It was snuffed out for all the wrong reasons.”
The program’s proponents have argued that the course was instrumental in boosting both grades and self-worth of Latino students, with research showing “the program’s students graduated at higher rates and performed better on state tests.” But Republican state legislators, seeking a safe space from brown people, were having none of that, in 2010 “passing a law prohibiting classes that encouraged the overthrow of the U.S. government; encouraged racial resentment; treated students as members of a group rather than individuals; or were aimed at a specific ethnicity.”
When then-superintendent John Huppenthal, who helped pass the law as a state senator, commissioned an audit of classes, he ignored findings that the program was in compliance of the law and called for an end to it. Facing possible funding cuts, the Tucson school board did just that in 2012. Teachers and students sued in response.
What the trial has for certain confirmed is Huppenthal’s racist history, who eventually lost re-election for superintendent and cried like a baby in 2014 when his anti-Latino internet history got exposed.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2taGJBF
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment