Freedom Center’s Philosophy 101 Course Is On the TUSD Board Agenda

1. It is far more important, in my view, for Parents/Guardians of TUSD Students to contact the TUSD Board Members with the Demand that they have TUSD Students take the AzMerit Assessment Examination; a return to School/Teacher Academic Accountability so as to determine if TUSD Students are being taught the requisite Academic Information per Grade Level so as to move on to the next Academic Level in Achieving their Career Goals.

   As it is presently, the Boards elimination of the AzMerit Assessment Examination removes any Academic Accountability in the District and is tantamount to Educational Child Abuse!!!

   Wake Up TUSD Parents/Guardians of TUSD Student!!! The very future of TUSD Students is at Risk because of the Boards Political Games and Incompetency!!!!!!

2. The libertarian ideas that people ought not initiate force against one another, and that all human interactions should be based on free consent, are clearly very dangerous.

   We need to keep dangerous ideas like these out of out public schools.

   That way, we save room for more sensible ideas. Like the ones taught in TUSD’s “Raza Studies” courses, for example.

3. Why teach them that when they can’t read, write, add or subtract?

   T hey
   U sually
   S tunt
   D evelopment

4. The Kochs are only one strand of libertarianism, apparently. At Nancy MacLean’s talk during the Festival of Books, (she wrote “Democracy in Chains” about the ideological beginnings of the Kochs and their ilk) a gentleman stood up and stated that he was a lifelong libertarian, and was furious when he read “Dark Money”(be Jane Meyer) because he felt like the Kochs and their ilk did not represent his views whatsoever. I thought it showed some interesting diversity, possibly conflict within the ideology.

   Everyone should read the textbook on which the course is based–OOPS, it was never provided for public comment because it was called a “supplementary text” despite the fact that the curriculum reads like the Table of Contents. And that is TWICE that it was never submitted for public approval. And the Freedom Center being who they are, they don’t make it easy to review the textbook either. Fortunately if you are able to access it, you won’t have to be hampered by bibliography, or very many citations, or even any professional reviews….because it doesn’t have any of those. The academic stuff its missing (to be considered an Economics text, anyway) are even more important….And of course there is the OOPS that the class never went to the Board for either authorization or assignment to be a core course. Kind of stinks to high heaven, frankly.

   Who knows, maybe introduction of the course was the quid pro quo to Sanchez’ 11th hour pleading to the legislature to retain the desegregation money for the district? One really wonders how it happened behind closed doors, because it sure didn’t happen in the sunlight! After looking for a year, it seems that every single person in TUSD Admin who made a decision about this course (or was supposed to) left no records and/or no longer works for the district. In addition, they left no trace! Even the most cooperative district employees are unable to find records because “this happened before I got there” (really? an organization the size of TUSD maintains NO archives? )

5. Yes it would make good sense in the mind of a progressive that we try to teach future generations that success and profits are evils we can ill afford. As long as we can confiscate the earnings of the successful to indoctrinate the ignorant lower class what could go wrong?

   Make sure they get medical marijuana for their anxiety and depression and abortions on demand for the females lacking self control.

   Utopia is just an election away!

6. The ignorance is strong with this one Obi-Wan.

7. The John Birch Society and the Koch brothers have no business influencing high school “Economics” coursework and it is extremely frightening that millions of Koch dollars have already been invested into ensuring that the Birch/Koch influence is palatable in Economics 101 high school courses in Arizona- some within our local school districts. The Tucson Unified School Board should remove or vote down items 3.b, 12, and 13 from the July 10th Board agenda since each item opens the door very widely to far right-wing partisan propaganda in our schools. Items 3.b. and 12 are being pimped by the U. of A. Freedom Center and, if approved, would endorse:
   The use of a very substandard and biased supplemental textbook (item 3.b), and
   A dual credit Economics 101 course for which the teacher of record is NOT a teacher within Tucson Unified School District (item 12.) and as far was anyone knows is NOT certified by the Arizona Department of Education as a high school teacher.
   Item 13 is being promoted by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Foundation and would endorse:
   An extracurricular after-school Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA) for high school students with hands-on design in the curriculum by Charles Koch. (Item 13.). Koch funding is probably being funneled to the Hispanic Chamber which will be used to indoctrinate youth to one single political viewpoint about economics.

   Tucson Unified School District is pushing all of this forward in the dead of summer after its Board and administration have been on hiatus with no one available to contact directly within the administration or Board offices. Whether intentional or not, this ends up being a sneaky way to push through curriculum and its so-called supplemental text (which just means that it is not open to parent and public review and feedback) and an after-school program with Koch-designed curriculum. What is going on in TUSD? Is NO one watching the kitchen coop? The wolves are very close to getting in, if not there already.

   The U. of A. Freedom Center is founded on John Birch Society principles and is funded heavily by Koch-brother money. The Koch brothers are known for their radical-right political leanings and for their funding of such extremist points of view. The Birch/Koch marriage is heavy-duty extreme right-Libertarian, which would be fine if the public schools were in the business of indoctrinating partisan politics but nothing should be further from the truth. This type of influence should not be welcome in our public schools and everything possible should be done to guard against these type of partisan political course offerings. The Koch/Birch curriculum godifies entrepreneurs without revealing that 90% of start-ups fail (according to Forbes) within the first to second year of business. These courses preach a great deal and teach very little. There is little provided to students that actually builds thinking skills or knowledge level. It shames humans for being at or below the poverty level and it allows others to easily judge those less fortunate. It is low to mid- income kids who are targeted by the U. of A. Freedom Center, which has been the political force in Arizona which has promoted this Birch/Koch platform. There is constant bashing of liberalism and a balanced viewpoint is not presented in this tunnel-vision curriculum.

   I teach in one of the high schools that offered these courses and I have had a number of students share with me the many, many questions they have about the content of their Economics class. Their questions were not answered by the teacher, the textbook, or any other resources offered in the class. This past school year, when I looked into the course, I found out it had not even been approved by the Governing Board. The Board had to pull some fast stunt to give credit for the unapproved course without actually approving the course but, within months, it has resurfaced for approval as an elective course, which is the easiest way to get a controversial class into TUSD. The Board gave credit to students for sitting in an unauthorized class for two semesters, because, of course, it was no fault of the students that TUSD did not know what it was doing by offering an unauthorized course with the use of an unauthorized textbook.

   I asked one of my students to lend me his textbook, so that I could read it and take a look at its academic contribution. The book sells for between $34 and $44 and was a required text in the course taught during the 2017-18 school year: Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship Paperback 2016 by Cathleen Johnson, Robert F. Lusch , David Schmidtz. Interesting and lucrative that David Schmidtz is also the teacher of record for the course. Thus, by requiring the textbook for his class, he and his wife, Cathleen Johnson (a co-auther) are both making money. What an example of capitalism, even if it is off the backs of children! What a clear example of the absence of any ethics, which is one of the premises that is supposed to be taught in the class. Are the students taught the meaning of hypocrisy?

   I found the assigned textbook to be pretty worthless and was surprised to find that there was no academic review of the book for use at the high school level (or beyond, for that matter). I did find the following review with which I agree totally and have included a few paragraphs from the review:

   https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-handmaiden-of-entrepreneurship
   But the ethics portion of the Philosophy 101 textbookthe only part that is nominally philosophyrecasts the entire course. The bread holding this econ-and-business sandwich together at both ends is a libertarian ideological framework that blurs the distinction between the market and community, and identifies market values as fully determinative of ethical, social, and cooperative value. In so doing, the textbook offers up about as alarming a display of Koch-inspired free-market propaganda as I have ever come across.
   Consider page one, from the introduction, which poses the fundamental nature of human existence in the following way: The human condition is that we each arrive as newborn babies to a world that does not need us. The greatest and most joyful challenge of adult life is to develop skills that make the people around you better off with you than without you. It is within your power to show up at the marketplace with something to offer that will make others glad to know you.
   It would certainly be news to evolutionary anthropologists that human parents, and indeed the larger tribal groups of which they are members, have no need of their offspring. It would also be surprising to the many philosophers, such as Aristotle, who see the building blocks of human society in families, households, and other basic social groupings, rather than individuals. But in the authors entrepreneurial hermeneutics, all of us are born orphans, claiming true love and respect only when we create something of value in the marketplace that other people need. Here Heideggers concept of geworfenheit (thrownness)the idea that our existence consists of feeling thrown into circumstances not of our choosingis spun into a social-Darwinist tale worthy of Herbert Spencer.
   And how do we advance from our infant worthlessness? By getting our hustle on: Homo sapiens became the wisest of primates around forty thousand years ago when we learned to make deals with strangers. . . . Thats humanitys super-power: not wings, fins, or fangs but our ability to make deals.
   Yes, at the apex of that famous series of photographs from knuckle-dragging primates, to coarse Neanderthal, to upright homo sapiens, is Donald J. Trump, the deal maker.

   Paired with this appallingly narrow vision of human life is an emaciated concept of ethics and human community, in which the market is elevated for all its communal aspects and non-market communal values are ignored or dismissed. In its introductory discussion of ethics, it defines the subject as how people have to live in order for the world to be a better place with them than without them. On its face, this definition sounds innocuous. But as we read how the authors make use of it, we see why it avoids talking more straightforwardly about ethics in terms of ones obligations to other people. The entrepreneur who can claim to have made the world a better place through his business savvy cant be said to owe anything more to others or to the community beyond the good he has already provided as an entrepreneur. Assuming he has followed the law and acted with integrity (i.e., not cheated or defrauded other market actors), he has done all that can be expected of him.

   Oh, and in looking into the Birch/Koch connections, another interesting connection was discovered which ties two key players in this matter directly to MARK STEGEMAN, TUSD Board member, which glued everything together.
   David J Schmidtz is the founding Director of the Arizona Center for Arizona Center for Philosophy of Freedom. Schmidtz is Kendrick Professor of Philosophy (College of Social and Behavioral Sciences) and Eller Chair of Service-Dominant Logic (College of Management) at the University of Arizona. He is also Head of the Department of Political and Moral Science and works closely with Mario Villarreal-Diaz Associate Director and Associate Professor, who is one of the mouthpieces for the high school course that being promoted. David Schmidtz is the teacher of record for TUSD Economics 101 courses. He is one of the authors of the assigned textbook for the course (it is required whether it is branded a textbook or a supplemental textbook). He profits from its sales. He is married to Cathleen Johnson, who is also an author of the textbook, as mentioned, and who also profits from its sales. From what is found on the U. of A. website under her name, she is heavily involved in the recruitment of high school students for the Economics course at point.

   Cathleen Johnson received her Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Tech. Mark Stegeman was a professor at Virginia Tech at about the same time. They both are heavily involved in Game Theory. Coincidence? Absolutely NOT! Stegeman and Schmidtz are both listed as faculty members at the U of A Economics Department, so they are colleagues. Stegeman should recuse himself from any vote having to do with the course under discussion or with its textbook.

   Please call and/or email the following Board members to demand that the June 10th Agenda Items: 3.b, 12, and 13 are removed PERMANENTLY from any vote now or in the future OR voted down PERMANENTLY during the meeting. The Freedom Center needs to back-off from its efforts to infiltrate TUSD with its Koch/Birch Society propaganda. Let Mark Stegeman know that he should recuse himself from any further action on this matter!

   Michael Hicks: michael.hicks@tusd1.org
   Kristel Foster: kristel.foster@tusd1.org
   Adelita Grijalva: adelitagrijalva@gmail.com
   Rachael Sedgwick: ms.sedgwick@gmail.com
   Mark Stegeman: markwstegeman@gmail.com
   During business hours: 225-6070

8. The course didnt receive Board approval before its initial run?!?!?!!!?!?!!!

   The course materials are not readily available for public inspection??!?!?!????!!!!!?!????!

   OMG, youre kidding me!!!!!!

   It cant be TUSD, the most transparent, high functioning, extremely professional operation in all of Southern Arizona Dem land.

   (MAS was not Board approved and the public is still waiting for any response to repeated public requests for links to the complete curriculum. Some of these scandalized citizen advocates have very short and / or deliberately selective memories.)

9. Thanks for the heads up on entertainment options for Tuesday evening, David.

   The call to the audience at that Board meeting is sure to be hilarious.

10. What is with the comparison of what is happening with Economics 101 and MAS? Some people stay stuck but this is ridiculous. MAS was created within TUSD by teachers and administrators. It was not a packaged program or curriculum, much like Economics 101. MAS ran into problems when bigots like Tom Horne and John Huppenthal decided to target the courses to eliminate them. Horne led the fight and Huppenthal climbed on board. John Pedicone accommodated both of them. After years of litigation the Federal US Court found that the law which was created to do away with Mexican American Studies was based on racial animus. In other words, it was racial hate which was responsible for “suspending” the MAS courses in TUSD. TUSD now offers Mexican American culturally relevant courses which were developed to meet state standards while also teaching about Mexican American literature and history. White supremacy was responsible for the undoing of MAS (the Court called it racial animus). White supremacy or elitism has a stronghold on what is driving the Freedom Center and Economics 101. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways that those in power continuously attempt to hold on to their power (and money). Those in power are threatened when those who have been oppressed become aware of the tactics and fight back. It is an ugly reality. Do not attempt to spin the facts by arguing that MAS is anything like the what the Koch/Birch Society-based Freedom Center and its million dollar curriculum is all about.

11. It would be so refreshing if the proponents of Republicans hate Latinos! and the proponents of An unregulated free market is as close as we get to justice and heaven on earth! could come together and agree to present both sets of ideas in a fair and balanced and impartial high school curriculum entitled Political ideologies (idiocies?) of the right and the left. Most high school kids I know are pretty smart and would have no trouble seeing through the weak arguments on both sides. They would relish identifying and diagramming the various fallacies and absurdities and how they relate to one another.

    It would be an even better course if it could include some real political science and economics in addition to the ludicrous caricatures of thinking / argumentation you find in both political camps. But how could such a thing be possible in TUSD? The leadership is addicted to conflict, intrigue and dysfunction. Its like a miserable soap opera someone might be forced to watch in hell.

12. @ Koch Brothers & John Birch Society

    What was decided about the law used to ban MAS is beside the point. The discussion here is about proper process within public school districts, and about who uses it and who perverts or evades it to slip their own favorite version of ideological indoctrination into secondary classrooms in publicly funded schools in a pluralistic democracy. As one political philosopher put it recently, …the entire political tradition of Anglo-American representative government…involves the acceptance of certain procedures and institutions as given i.e. as creating the framework within which disagreements can be negotiated.

    Republicans and Democrats (and Libertarians and Greens and the politically apathetic) live in this country and use its publicly funded schools. The process of public approval and review of curricula is in place for a reason: so the viewpoints of various groups of citizens do not get distorted or misrepresented, and so no group uses publicly funded schools for indoctrination rather than education.

    The focus on process and transparency is necessary to ensure that this happens and that groups with differing opinions enter into dialogue and achieve constructive consensus. To begin teaching MAS without public review and approval of the curriculum evaded public dialogue and was just as wrong as to begin teaching this Freedom Center course without public review and approval.

    When MAS advocates fail to acknowledge this, do they recognize they are undermining the proceodural norms that protect their point of view as well as that of other groups?

    Apparently not.

    I half wonder whether Stegeman or some other group isnt orchestrating the whole thing as a massive bad joke / tit-for-tat, See how it feels when someone does it to you demonstration.

13. Many MAS proponents acknowledged that the curriculum review process had not been applied to MAS courses, which is why the MAS community (most; not all) supported the idea of developing Mexican American culturally relevant courses which complied with State standards. What is not generally understood, and which is not a defense for the absence of MAS- approved curriculum, is that for the most part, TUSD did not have ANY approved curriculum. This is well documented in the 2004 Curriculum Audit which was conducted by expert consultants. What still is not widely acknowledged is that the motivation behind the law which focused on the abolishment of MAS was pure racial animus. What is occurring with the Koch/Birch Society Economics course and Koch afterschool program is a very bad joke- at the expense of kids- and may be part of some “Game Theory.” The importance of process and transparency is essential in all public institutions and should be applied consistently across the board.

14. Interesting info, Stop the Attempts. Thank you.

    During the MAS trial I tried to find a copy of the MAS curriculum to review. I tried again when, after the verdict, there was some discussion of perhaps switching out the subsequently developed and Board-approved CRC curriculum for the MAS curriculum it had replaced. I was unable, again, to locate it.

    As I understand it, the verdict that condemned the law used to ban MAS is a judgment about the quality of the State Department of Eds and AZ Legs actions vis a vis TUSD. It does not erase whatever problems there were with public process and transparency within the district before MAS was taught, nor does it automatically legitimize a curriculum that still has not undergone a public review and comment process or received Board approval in a public vote.

    I am generally sympathetic to labor history, cultural history, and attempts to help people understand the economics of colonialism. I am less sympathetic to free market theory, but it does need to be taught together with the other subjects because it is an active force in our country and you cannot understand American political forces or the rationale behind policies some of these forces favor without it. Perhaps if the various factions could talk to one another they might be able to agree on a curriculum that represents both sides fairly and lets students make informed decisions about what they themselves choose to believe. That will not happen while so much that is said on either side is hostile and uncivil, nor will it happen while people are subverting transparency and process to slip things by under the table.

    In general, both locally and nationally, we dont seem to have the habits of mind or styles of relating to others that facilitate constructive dialogue in a country where the Constitution guarantees freedom of belief and makes pluralism an ongoing reality. It requires certain virtues to turn that diversity into a strength rather than a liability, and there doesnt seem to be broad understanding of that. Its troubling.

    (Im still interested in reading the MAS curriculum, by the way, so if there is a link to a place where the curricular materials are available for public review, please be so kind as to provide it.)

15. Is Dr. Gabriel Trujillo in over his head? He seems to be making mistakes that a more seasoned superintendent may have seen coming.

16. Do you think?

17. This will be sweet. The school district that honored a mass murderer by hanging his portrait up on the walll, a mass murderer who shot 14,000 Hispanics in the back of the head, will be denying students the opportunity to learn about Plato giving us the mission to pursue truth and the good.

    Tucson has fewer residents than it did ten years ago.

    This fall,TUSD wil have 15,000 fewer students than it did 18 years ago.

    Only ten percent of its parents rate Tucson an excellent place to raise a child.

    Prediction:

    Ten years from now,all these statements will still be true.

    Every one is good for something. Tucson serves Arizona well as a bad example.

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