Arizona’s Ban on Ethnic Studies: The Latest Battleground over Ideology, Power, and Voice

The recent dismantling of the Mexican American Studies Program in Tucson, Arizona has less to do with facts over a highly successful thirteen year old curriculum taught in the Tucson Unified School District and more to do with ideological dominance and power over whose voices will be heard in a democracy.

In response to the long historical failure of the public schools to raise academic achievement and reduce the dropout rates of students of color, the Tucson Unified School District created a Mexican American studies program that would be more culturally responsive and socially relevant to the needs of the large population of Latino students in the district. By all accounts, the program has been highly successful. Readers can go to the Save Ethnic Studies website for details about audits on the program’s effectiveness. In 2010, in a highly charged political environment, the Arizona State Legislature passed HB 2281 banning any program that “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.” (Arizona Revised Statute § 15-112, 2010)

Despite the state’s own commissioned study that showed the Mexican American Studies Program fully complied with the law and had produced significant results in student achievement, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal , nevertheless, continued his pressure to suspend the program. In January of this year, faced with a multimillion dollar reduction in state aid as a penalty, the Tucson School Board voted 4-1 to dismantle the program. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is now considering a suit that was brought by students and teachers. The court found, however, that the teachers do not have standing but that the suit by students could continue. Teachers have set up a website, Save Ethnic Studies, where readers can follow the progress of the case, donate to the cause, and sign a petition.

The struggle in Arizona goes to the heart of democracy. As U.S. Rep. Raul M. Grijalva says, “This legislation against diversity might be focused on Tucson, but it has significant ramifications across the country.” (Biggers, 2011) It raises questions about who will have a voice and how that voice will be exercised. It asks whose history should be taught and how it should be portrayed. Ultimately, it raises questions about truth. Do we betray our students by presenting only a sanitized account of our history; do we pretend that this nation has never failed to live up to its ideals; do we continue to suppress voices that have been historically silenced, or more often, co-opted and appropriated by the dominant discourse. Or do we allow and encourage alternative narratives in a more inclusive democratic conversation. Public education is at the heart of these questions.

As teachers were ordered to box the censored books for storage in the Textbook Depository, one cannot help but wonder what messages were being sent by a political authority that was supposedly concerned about not promoting ethnic resentment. For young people whose encounter with these books led to self discovery, positive images of Latino identity, and transformative knowledge and action, the State’s actions must surely have been traumatizing and a lesson in the very oppression and hegemony that often defined the social conditions of their communities.

References

Biggers, J. (2011). Arizona's Ethnic Studies Ban Has National Ramifications, Warns U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, HuffPost, Posted: 5/11/11 11:00 PM ET. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/arizonas-ethnic-studies-b_b_860860.html on January 21, 2012.

Prohibited Courses and Classes; Enforcement. AZ Rev. Stat. §15-112 (2010) Retrieved from azleg.gov.

For more insights into this issue, I invite readers to visit the upcoming issue of our electronic journal, the Journal of Educational Controversy (Volume 6 Number 1) and read “The Hypocrisy of Racism: Arizona's Movement towards State-Sanctioned Apartheid” by Augustine F. Romero, Director of Student Equity and Co-Founder of the Social Justice Project, Tucson Unified School District, Arizona.

Going Beyond Textbooks to Paint a Fuller Picture of Dr. Martin Luther King for Students

From a national holiday in his honor to a firm position in the state standards guiding the prescribed curriculum of nearly all schools, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of the most widely celebrated civil rights leaders and dissenting activists in America. Examining the treatment of this exemplar as portrayed in widely adopted social studies textbooks reveals important and worrisome insight into the prescribed treatment of leaders who engage in social and political dissent, if they are mentioned at all. While the content of what is taught about an historical figure certainly encompasses more than just the adopted textbooks of the school, textbooks offer a starting point for examining the account of a figure that has been, at minimum, tacitly endorsed by the school board through their adoption of the text, even if teachers may chose to supplement or ignore its contents.

My graduate research assistant and I examined the treatment of King in nine major textbooks selected based on large state adoptions as chronicled by the American Textbook Council, representing 80% of the textbook market in social studies. In most textbooks, King is celebrated as a hero who preached love and unity as he tried to bring together Americans divided by racism. A typical portrayal of King is demonstrated in the eighth grade social studies textbook, Creating America: “Dr. King became the leader of the Montgomery bus boycott. Fresh out of school, he had been in Montgomery about a year. But his courage and eloquence made him a perfect person to lead the movement. King learned about nonviolence by studying religious writers and thinkers. He came to believe that only love could convert people to the side of justice. He described the power of non-violent resisters: ‘We will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom…we will win you in the process’” (p. 585). While there certainly are many aspects of this image that are true, these textbooks tend to ignore the complexities of King’s life as a political dissenter and social activist. The radical aspects of his work, especially those that became clearer later in his life as he fought poverty and the Vietnam War, are rarely mentioned, if at all.

One of the few mentions is the rather innocuous statement in The American Nation: “He became increasingly upset that funding for social programs was being diverted to the war in Vietnam” (p. 938). With the exception of the more nuanced portrait offered by Joy Hakim in A History of Us, the overall textbook impression offered of King is as a gentle uniter—one who is accepted and appreciated by all—and one who worked hard to calmly win over white people. He is shown in contrast to some of his Civil Rights colleagues who chose to focus on empowering Black peers instead and especially in contrast to Malcolm X whose radical tactics many textbooks imply should not be emulated. Failing to demonstrate for students the ways in which King passionately and even, at times, angrily engaged dissent to reveal problems, break unjust laws, rally the public, and demand alternative ways of living, prevents students from seeing the success and necessity of dissent and activism in democracy. Painting such a limited and seemingly rosy image of King suggests that the work of other dissenters who are less well-known or respected may be even more problematic or inaccurate, possibly depriving students of a rich account of the complexities and sustained efforts of those who practice dissent well. In order to paint a fuller and more accurate picture of King and his contributions, schools need to go beyond the image offered in popular textbooks.

Parents Outweigh Curriculum in New Hampshire

The House and Senate of New Hampshire kicked off the new year by overturning a veto by democratic Governor John Lynch on HB 542. This bill allows parents to object to classroom curricula (and in some cases also the way material is taught) and requires schools to offer an alternative that is satisfactory to parents. Most obviously, the implementation of such a bill is a nightmare for teachers who, though unlikely, could face dozens of objections and alternative requirements for their students at any one time. But perhaps more importantly, this bill favors the views of parents potentially to the detriment of the public good, the dissolution of democratically selected curriculum, and the full development of the child as an autonomous liberal chooser which requires exposure to multiple and conflicting worldviews and life choices.

Cases such as Wisconsin vs Yoder, Pierce vs Society of Sisters, and Mozert vs Hawkins County Board of Education have struggled to balance parents’ rights, children’s autonomous development, freedom of religious practice, and the needs of the state. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has also weighed in on the issue, suggesting that children should receive a certain type of education that prepares them for peaceful global citizenship, while also allowing that parents should have choice over the type of education that children receive.

While the scales seem to have been tipped toward the parents in NH last week, I am reminded of a counter call from a fellow philosopher of education, Sigal Ben Porath: “"When parents oppose teaching their children a democratic, civic curricula (as in Mozert), they ‘do not have a general right to override otherwise legitimate democratic decisions concerning the schooling of their children.’ It is therefore the school’s commitment to democracy that takes precedence over any demand made by specific parents or groups regarding the civic education of children. This claim, widely accepted by political, educational, and legal commentators in the context of Mozert, should be extended to include situations in which the social majority rejects the educational commitment to substantive democracy. The democratic argument for committing the public education system to the principles of democracy, not to majority rule or parental authority, should be maintained in better and worse times." I can see how parents should have some outlets for expressing objections and putting forward alternatives when the content taught in schools is legitimately wrong or sufficiently unjust (I’m thinking here of some of the worrisome social studies content favored in Texas and the limited version of history endorsed by the state in Arizona and Florida). But overall, I generally favor tipping the scales toward democracy, including curriculum that is democratically constructed and geared toward the public good.

I'm (not) a little teapot? A Muslim family's accommodation request causes consternation in Québec

The scene: a kindergarten. Little children are singing a simple song together. As usual, some follow the words easily and know the tune, while others hang back, more hesitant. At first glance, it seems like a familiar tableau.

Yet in this Québec classroom, something is different. One child is not participating--while the other children sing and chant, she sits quietly, wearing noise cancelling headphones. Her parents are conservative Muslims, and they have decided to forbid her from participating in the school's musical activities.

The Montreal tabloid Le Journal de Montréal reports that this scene is a regular occurrence at one kindergarten class in Montreal's Saint-Michel neighborhood. The decision has been backed by both the school authorities and the Ministry of Education.

Samasource: ethical outsourcing or 21st century deskilling?

For the last couple of weeks, I've been away on a trip in New Zealand. It's a spectacular place, and I've been "tramping" (this is the New Zealand word for walking) along all kinds of magical trails. As such, I haven't had much time for blogging. However, on a drive between tramps, I did manage to take in a fascinating BBC radio documentary on Samasource, a new San Francisco non-profit that does ethical outsourcing. This story annoyed me to such an extent that I felt compelled to write a post about it when I returned.

Samasource is a non-profit organization that claims to "bring dignified, computer-based work to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty." The work that Samasource farms out includes typing out business cards and receipts, checking scanned text for errors, and verifying business listings. Samasource then pays women and refugees a living wage to do this work.

What could possibly be wrong with this?

Danger: Thin Understanding!

Over a year after it came out, I finally sat down to watch Waiting for Superman. A conversation between the filmmaker and an African American grandmother from Washington DC, who has custody of her grandson Anthony, hit the issues square on the head, I thought. "Choice?", the grandmother exclaims. Taking in Anthony after his father died was no choice, she continues. He had no one else, so of course she raised him.

The rest of the movie was bunk. A case can be made for charter schools, but this film's shallow understanding of education puts its level of argument somewhere below that of a pre-service teacher at the end of one good semester of ed school. Those teachers, in other words, have a better understanding of education than Guggenheim does. When the cartoon showed a teacher pouring knowledge into the head of a child (with a comment to the effect of "it should be easy, right; knowledge goes from the teacher to the child"), I had to turn the movie off for a minute. I had to again after the movie claimed that of course KIPP schools can be scaled up -- after all there are around 80 already! -- as if this were any kind of evidence. (Even KIPP's founders deny that KIPP can be scaled up to include all schoolchildren who would benefit from such a program.) And while those were the most egregious errors, there were plenty more.

As I watched, I kept wondering if Guggenheim was aware of the irony of including that grandmother's quote. Choice? There is no choice. If there are children who need to be cared for, those who care about them take them in. That has never been a factual description of the United States, but it is certainly our ideal, our national myth. If all of us thought about schools and schoolchildren the way that grandmother thought about her grandson -- as vulnerable yet invaluable people who need care and commitment, not a menu of choices -- we'd end up with . . . well, public schooling.

This is but one of the deep and important truths that public schoolteachers understand. I'd call them the real Supermen, except, of course, most of them are not men. They're women. So, given that most schoolteachers are women, why not "Waiting for Wonderwoman"? Because there is an ugly gendered undercurrent to the criticisms of public school teachers at large in our national discourse -- and in this ugly movie. One of those other simple lessons that Guggenheim seems to have missed is that anytime you're inclined to scapegoat a group of relatively disempowered people for a national problems, you should think again.

I waited a year to see this movie, and might as well have kept on waiting. The filmmaker, I'm sorry to say, seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel.

Karl Rove's latest attack ad: Watch out, Elizabeth Warren's got THEORIES!

Another week, another attack ad aimed at Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. This one, apparently, is courtesy of Karl Rove and his American Crossroads organization.

This ad, completely ridiculous though it may be, is substantially more effective than the last one. Let's go through it frame by frame:

Occupy our Classrooms!

Two recent newspaper stories caught my attention. In both, teachers sought to connect the content they were teaching to the Occupy protestors in public parks near their schools. In one case, the teacher engaged her students in asking the protestors about the rationales for their actions, the understandings of democracy that prompted their actions, and the like. Given that much of our current prescribed, tested, and hidden curriculum works to silence student protest and divorce teaching of democracy from that actual practice of democracy occurring outside school doors, I found these stories to be worth celebrating.

Educating students for citizenship should not be confined to school walls or school personnel. It’s important that children experience organic efforts at trying out citizenship and dissent by studying and at appropriate times even working alongside real people engaged in struggle, doing what Giroux calls making “the political more pedagogical.” Efforts to bring children out to politically and civically active groups and to bring those groups into schools helps to unite the prescribed and external curriculum. Skilled teachers can bring those external experiences back into the classroom as fodder for discussion, such as critique of the way the group operates, including how it uses language and media to engage dissent, how it builds coalitions, and whether or not its intentions are good, thereby helping students better understand how successful dissenting groups work and how they keep democracy healthy. Moreover, such an experience allows children to see how real life people engaged in protest experience suffering, struggle, and triumph, humanizing the learning of dissenting citizenship for children.

So I say let us use the Occupy protests as learning opportunities to help our students make sense of the political events occurring around them and, moreover, to learn to appreciate (and even practice) dissent as central to a flourishing democracy.

"For now I see what is the matter with you, John Dewey": Dispatches from the Scudder Klyce files

One of the little known facts about Dewey is that he had an intense, frequent correspondence with a very strange ex-Navy man, Scudder Klyce (the image above is a postcard sent by Klyce in 1907, when he was on a naval posting in Nicaragua).

Outside of the world of Dewey scholarship, Klyce is perhaps best known his book, Universe, to which Dewey wrote a forward. The opening lines of the book describe Klyce's ambitious project clearly:

1. a. This book is a brief description, and rigorous proof of the truth of the description, of the universe and all that appertains to it, both "spiritual" and "material." Hence, the book is religion, science, and philosophy. 

Since Universe is (as one would expect) rather heavy going, I will make no judgment here as to whether Klyce succeeded in this difficult task.

At any rate, Klyce was a bright man, but he was also an odd duck, as virtually all of his (extremely lengthy) letters to Dewey make clear.

Consider, for example, Klyce's comments in a letter to Dewey, dated July 31, 1927. Klyce has recently found out that Dewey's wife had died, and he takes the time to send the following sympathetic missive:

I am very sorry that your wife has died. And I thank you for telling me the circumstances. See JD to Klyce, 1927.07.27 (04803).     For now I can see what is and has been the matter with you. I am sorry that I have been bothering you when your mind was thus preoccupied. This letter of yours which I have just received (yesterday afternoon) is so confused and contradictory as to be substantially incoherent. And I state that simple fact without implying any sort of adverse criticism—I am rather inclined to consider it a positive merit on your part that you should have written such intellectuallly defective stuff.

And the letter does not stop here!

Fixing schools because we can't fix the real problems

Did you catch Charles Blow's piece in the weekend NY Times featuring this chart? The chart is aptly titled "Bottom of the Heap" and makes clear that when it comes to the concept of the "just society," the United States does not make the grade. The US ranks 27th among 31 developed nations in measures of intergenerational justice (poverty prevention, child poverty, senior citizen poverty, income inequality, pre-primary education and health rating). Our senior citizens are not at the bottom of the barrel (thank you, Medicare and Social Security), our health rating is higher than Mexico and the former Eastern Bloc countries (something to brag about?), and we spend nearly as much as Finland on pre-primary education (not as good as it sounds since we're still in the next to the last quintile), but the other ratings are truly terrible.

As I was studying this chart I was reminded that inequality is not born and nurtured in our schools; it is deeply woven into American society. It is created by adults and sustained by adults -- and it should be up to adults to talk openly and respectfully about what kind of social fabric we want to weave and wear. Instead we talk about equity vs. excellence (a false dichotomy if there ever was one) and ask that we fix what ails society through high quality schooling.

I am all for high quality schooling for all our children -- and we need to mobilize every person and every resource in that effort not because it solves inequality but because education is good -- for students, for communities, for economic interests. But I can't help but think that those who consider themselves "new reformers" of public schools are fixing schools because they just don't know how to fix any of our real societal problems.