The New York Times popped in this weekend to give a national focus on the Tucson Unified School District’s attempts to rebuild and refocus the resources that were scattered about when it dropped the Mexican-American studies program last year.
From the New York Times:
Meanwhile, at the district’s central offices, Maria Figueroa was busy sifting through résumés and rearranging her calendar to squeeze in one more interview. As the director of a new program intended to help the district’s perennially struggling Hispanic students, by far the majority of the enrollment, Ms. Figueroa enjoys a rare distinction: she has jobs to fill and money to hire.
She also has a big task — mending the fences broken by the dismantling of the Mexican-American studies department last school year after an acrimonious debate over the politics of its curriculum and the type of activism it had promoted. A 2010 law banning lessons that fostered racial resentment and solidarity among members of a single ethnic group, drafted as legislators worked to frame the state’s controversial immigration bill, eventually killed the program. Facing persistent financial problems, the school district buckled under the threat of millions of dollars in fines.
Instead of classes about historical realities and the everyday experiences of Mexican-Americans, once a hallmark of the department, Ms. Figueroa’s program will offer tutoring to Hispanic students who are teetering on the edge of failure. In place of discussions about race and identity, it will recruit mentors from among Hispanic business leaders and college graduates to talk to students.
The overarching goal is as basic as it is fundamental. “We’re going to teach the kids that they need to stay in school, that school is important,” Ms. Figueroa said.
When looking at the story, one can’t help but feel that TUSD has put itself (and Figueroa) into an unenviable position of trying to repair something that wasn’t broken until they took a hammer to it, if only because of this passage:
About 800 students were enrolled in the Mexican-American studies department at last count, district officials said. They outperformed their peers on Arizona’s state standardized tests in reading (by 45 percentage points), writing (by 59 percentage points) and math (by 33 percentage points). If it is improving achievement the district was looking for, its proponents have argued, the department should have been expanded.
For the rest of the story, head to the New York Times.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2012.
New York Times needs to butt the hell out. The Mexican-American Studies program taught racism and hate; it taught how to hate & kill whites and to take back the territory (by force) that they sold to the U.S. The program needs to be abolished period. If these hispanic/latino students wants to be and live in the United States then they should learn the history of this country and not Mexico and the teaching of Raza. Teachers & those who support the M-A studies program should be removed also from the school district. I’d even question how many of these students are here illegally?? Many I’m sure. It’s time the USA stops being pushed around and giving into ethnic groups. The United States doesn’t need to collapse because of multiculturelism. Other countries have collapsed because of it, read history. It’s time for this to stop.
Mexican American studies is American history.
Perhaps the best approach would be to enroll these students in a classic American History curriculum, something long-missing from most schools. This will teach inclusion through assimilation, something which once was an integral part of being American and, in my view work very well.
As an American of Mexican descent, I was always of the opinion that, like the American of Italian descent and the American of Irish descent next to me in class, I was an American, just a plain American. It was an inclusive environment. My question is; can the same be said of Mexican – American studies? I think not.
It is wrongheaded to place ethnicity as the defining element of a person. The horribly misguided attempt at putting African-American studies in many schools has made the error of this type of educational segregation/Balkanization manifestly clear. It is time to place America first and ancestry a distant second or less.
hadenough, I’ve got to ask: With that level of in-depth knowledge of the program, were you a student of the classes?
David,
I read the article. I think the author made a pretty serious error in equating the MAS programs with the other ethnic studies programs that are still being offered by TUSD. MAS courses were replacing core credit courses such as American History, whereas the other ethnic studies courses are elective courses, this was and still is the crux of the issue for me, despite all the hoopla about racism and anti-American overthrow of the government. I know that this created a rift amongst TUSD teachers, many of them Mexican-American and history or literature teachers; they were afraid to speak out publicly because of a legitimate fear of being attacked or ostracized by some in factions their own community or from the state government. I only know this because I spoke with a handful of them separately and they expressed the same sentiments and fears. It is a shame that the debate and controversy has been forged by polarized groups, the Horne/crazy republican contingent on one side and factions of the Chicano movement on the other. I wish these courses were still offered as electives but that option was lost long ago when the people in charge of the MAS program decided to fly too close to the sun (I learned all about Icarus and Daedalus from one of the MAS teachers when he was still teaching regular literature/English courses, not to mention Sandra Cisneros and other American authors he introduced to us. He would probably be ashamed at how bad my grammar has become!)
Now, objective minded Independents such as myself get labeled racists by one group because we do not support these classes replacing core classes and we are labeled liberal/anti-American fanatics by the other side because we still do think these courses have a place in our school system. What a shame.
I know you have spent more time on the subject than I have, so if I am wrong about the other ethnic studies programs being electives or the MAS program replacing core curriculum, please let me know. Have you had any conversations with teachers, or ex-students, from within or outside of the program expressing a similar sentiment?
It’s important for every student in America to learn American History and Civics. Ethnic Studies can be taught as an elective, but it shouldn’t teach hate and racism.