- Image courtesy of shutterstock.com
UPDATE: Huppenthal’s “Barbarian at the gates” comment gets multiple derisive tweets from conservative Michelle Malkin (“So you think we’re ‘barbarians at the gate?’ You ain’t heard nothing yet, pal.”). Hupp’s primary opponent Diane Douglas chimed in with tweets of her own (“Yesterday my opponent called us ‘barbarians’ for wanting to #StopCommonCore in #AZ”)
We’ve already established that Arizona Ed Supe John Huppenthal loves vouchers. Loves ’em. Records robocalls to parents telling them to flee public schools for private schools. Plans to give students more state money to go to private schools than they get when they go to public schools. Loves vouchers.
Hupp also loves Common Core. (Irony alert: Private schools don’t have to use the Common Core standards Hupp loves, and their students don’t have to take the state tests he says are essential to judge student progress in public schools.)
Hupp loves Common Core enough to call its right wing opponents “barbarians at the gate.”
“I have put my career on the line to stave off the barbarians. I very likely could lose this election,” Huppenthal said. “I’m okay with that because I felt I did the right thing for this education system.”
So far as I can tell from the article, Hupp isn’t calling folks like me barbarians, people on the progressive side of education who are concerned that the testing associated with Common Core will be even more damaging than our current high stakes tests connected with No Child Left Behind. I have no problem with individual school districts and states adopting the standards, which have had very little field testing, and modifying them as teachers and administrators see how they work. But that can’t happen so long as the tests are a Damoclean Sword hanging over educators’ heads, threatening them with staff firings and school closures. That’s why I’m an opponent of Common Core in its current form.
The barbarians Hupp is referring to are the part of his base he and former Ed Supe Tom Horne riled up with their assaults on TUSD’s Mexican American Studies. Will they desert him for his primary opponent Diane Douglas who is running against Common Core? We’ll see. The people on the far right who have been yelling at Hupp during town meetings will find a friend in Douglas, and they tend to dominate Republican primaries. If Hupp survives the primary, will the anti-Common Core folks vote for him in the general? Democratic candidate David Garcia has a much more nuanced attitude toward Common Core, which could mean some Republicans will either switch their allegiance to Garcia or just leave the Ed Supe box blank.
AN “I FEEL IGNORED” NOTE: Gary Grado, the Capitol Times reporter who wrote the “barbarian” story, didn’t acknowledge Common Core critics on the left. Here’s how he described the battle.
Common Core, a set of math and English standards the state Board of Education adopted in 2010, has pitted Democrats and moderate Republicans against the more conservative wing of the GOP.
A bit more research by Grado would have revealed a vibrant and growing contingent fighting Common Core from the left. In fact, if he picked up a copy of yesterday’s Star, he would have seen an op ed from the Washington Post complaining about us. I’m not hurt by being ignored. I’m bothered that Grado does his readers a disservice by creating the incorrect impression that Democrats are in agreement about Common Core and the only the far right is opposed.
This article appears in May 8-14, 2014.
Hupp sure likes historical analogies. He said in an interview he fancied himself like Hannibal who “stretched” out the Romans when he “stretched” out his fight against MAS over the course of a year. Now his mission is to “stave off the barbarians.” He must lie in bed at night dreaming of himself as a White knight. Pun intended.
Seems like the author *really* has some problems with vouchers in the education system in Arizona.
I may not understand the ins-and-outs of the common core (is that what this article is even about?), but I think that in the end, school vouchers are a good idea as anything that gives parents more choice is good.
Safier doesn’t seem to be from Arizona, and may have moved here in 2003, well, for those of us who spent our school-age years in TUSD, (and have kids there now), the public school system has been slowly sliding down hill for decades.
When I was a student in TUSD, (Safier doesn’t have first-hand experience), they pulled the Latino kids out of class for “MEChA” classes which made them angry, and less likely socialize with white students, and folks with mixed ancestry like me who weren’t interested. Fast-forward to today and students are now being used as pawns as part of the “MAS” classes, same old-drill from decades ago, basically indoctrinating kids into a world view, *not* teaching critical thinking skills which is the exact opposite of classes that force you to think a certain way.
MAS classes don’t prepare students for life outside the classroom, and at worse, it is wasted classroom time as students could be learning the critical thinking skills they need. TUSD auditors said that TUSD pushes “reading something and at least understand what was being said”, and hasn’t reached the point of teaching “concepts” to students, big mistake as TUSD students are falling behind.
Huppenthal and Horne didn’t “rile up” the base with “attacks on MAS”, most level-headed folks of both political persuasions wouldn’t want their tax dollars going to MAS, and would seriously question the material, which is often a mixture of fiction and racism, and which doesn’t open up students minds to learning about other cultures. The thing is that not a lot of folks were told what MAS really taught.
One piece of MAS/critical race story is about whites cheerfully selling blacks to aliens from outer space. Certainly not now, and not in the past, did all white support slavery. Also, Critical race theory folks have said that Jewish participation in the Civil Rights movement was done out of “tawdry self interest”, and compared a little Jewish girl who died during the Holocaust, (I’m thinking Anne Frank), as a the closest thing Jews have to a saint. Isn’t this enough to make most people want to vomit?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race…
Ultra-progressives on the left suffer from the same affliction as folks on the far right, they believe their world view is paramount to understanding the world, that racism explains everything. Same thing as tea party folks who believe that the federal government is evil and that U.N. troops are coming.
I would be interested to see a citation for Mr. Schlotzsky’s example of MAS/critical race studies including “wites cheerfully selling blacks to alines from outer space.” And also for Jewish participation in the Civil Rights movement being dne out of “tawdry self interest.”
I agree that sending one’s children to private school is certainly a choice that some parents are able to make, but I do not wish to pay for that choice with my tax dollars which is what Mr. Huppenthal supports.
Wow, who would have thought?
Vouchers are really not a bad thing. Common Core really isn’t a bad thing.
But Secretary Huppenthal really doesn’t get the issue.
Vouchers to help raise little Huppenthal’s are really a bad thing, especially when the Arizona Educationi System is one of the worst in the country.
And you don’t fix something by abandoning it for political purposes. (Most of the private educationial systems are being operated by Far Right “Christian” Operatives, who would rather teach “Christian” values than mainstream educate our young.
We just need a new Commissioner.
Although Huppenthal may not be a dinosaur, he has certainly outlived his usefulness in our educational system.
The quote was from the Wiki page for “critical race theory”:
“Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals writes that critical race theorists have constructed a philosophy which makes a valid exchange of ideas between the various disciplines unattainable.
The radical multiculturalists’ views raise insuperable barriers to mutual understanding. Consider the Space Traders story. How does one have a meaningful dialogue with Derrick Bell? Because his thesis is utterly untestable, one quickly reaches a dead end after either accepting or rejecting his assertion that white Americans would cheerfully sell all blacks to the aliens. The story is also a poke in the eye of American Jews, particularly those who risked life and limb by actively participating in the civil rights protests of the 1960s. Bell clearly implies that this was done out of tawdry self-interest. Perhaps most galling is Bell’s insensitivity in making the symbol of Jewish hypocrisy the little girl who perished in the Holocaust—as close to a saint as Jews have. A Jewish professor who invoked the name of Rosa Parks so derisively would be bitterly condemned—and rightly so.[34]
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry have argued that critical race theory, along with critical feminism and critical legal studies, has antisemitic and anti-Asian implications, has worked to undermine notions of democratic community and has impeded dialogue.[35]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race…
It is clear that there is a rift between Asian-Americans, who are hurt the most by affirmative action, and Latinos who are one of the helped groups, witness the recent political outfall in California.
As the proponents of critical race theory believe that racism is everywhere and explains everything and that the “white privilege power structures” in the U.S. needs to be destroyed, I can see why some attack Huppenthal as theoretically he would be part of that structure.
There’s a need, a requirement even, to look at every news story and push folks to see it through the lens of racism. Look at the Trayvon Martin tragedy, the news media pounced on it as a white man killing a black teen without cause, even after it was obvious that Zimmerman is multi-racial and looks non-white based on superficial skin color.
Now CNN is obsessively covering Sterlings, yeah that guy has done some pretty bad things if he kept Latinos out of apartments he rents. But there is a lot of news that isn’t being covered, and Sterlings can and are getting theirs.
Michael Jordan always seemed to me to be an especially smart person, and he recently said that as a kid he hated all white people, but later developed compassion for white people. I think we can all see that happening to a lot of blacks and Latino kids, given the messaging from the media and so forth, but the thing is that as an adult, most folks rise above that and see people as individuals.
If you don’t “grow up”, and live like a respectable adult, then you sort of become a Sterling, or the folks who push the critical race theory which seems like just thinly veiled anti-white/antisemitic/anti-asian rhetoric in a lot of instances.
I’m just wondering if I walked into a MAS class, and asked if it was important to show compassion for white people, what sort of response I’d get.
What would happen if I asked a group of white students if it was important to show compassion for Latinos?
As Pitaniello said,
“And you don’t fix something by abandoning it for political purposes. (Most of the private educationial systems are being operated by Far Right “Christian” Operatives, who would rather teach “Christian” values than mainstream educate our young.”
At one point in my life I thought that parochial schools were very detrimental to student’s education, and that public schooling was the way to go, especially as I thought that parochial schools were against teaching science.
But I’ve never been in parochial school, so maybe I shouldn’t judge, and I’ve seen that the Catholic Church does do good in this world, despite controversial positions on certain issues.
Parochial schools do offer benefits, and I think that choice is good. As for parochial schools brainwashing kids with “Christian values”, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor went to a Catholic school,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/nyregion…
She’s not a conservative.