Trial Date Set: Latest Action on the Banning of Mexican American Studies in Tucson, Arizona

Editor: We have been following the events following the banning of the Mexican American Studies Program in the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona in our journal, on our blog and in several panels and forums that were videotaped and made available to our readers.  See “The Hypocrisy of Racism: Arizona's Movement towards State-Sanctioned Apartheid” by Augustine F. Romero, “DangerousMinds In Tucson: The Banning of Mexican American Studies and Critical ThinkingIn Arizona” by Curtis Acosta, “Precious Knowledge: An Interview with Film Director,Ari Palos, on April 15, 2013” by Celina Meza, and “Keeping the Flames at Bay:The Interplay between Federal Oversight and State Politics in Tucson’s MexicanAmerican Studies Program,” by Leslie A. Locke and Ann E. Blankenship.

A trial date has now been set to challenge the constitutionality of these actions.  Below is an e-mail that we received that will bring our readers up to date on events.  

FROM RECENT E-MAIL:

April 13, 2017

Mexican American Studies Trial

Tucson, Arizona

The legal challenge to the constitutionality of the State of Arizona's banning of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District has been scheduled for trial in Tucson, Arizona. Trial will be held on June 26-30, 2017 and continue on July 17-21, 2017.

The MAS case contends that the actions of the State of Arizona violated the Equal Protection and First Amendment rights of the school districts Mexican American students. This includes the enactment of the statute HB 2281 and the subsequent enforcement of the law compelling TUSD to eliminate the MAS department, all classes, curriculum and course material.

The anti-MAS law was passed and signed into law shortly after Arizona's infamous SB1070 anti-immigrant law was passed. Both are products of the anti-Mexican sentiments that have been rampant throughout the state. The MAS case was filed October 18, 2010. In the initial proceeding the district court found one of the four provisions in the statute unconstitutional. After a successful appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the case was remanded for trial on the Equal Protection and First Amendment claims.

Trial will be held in Tucson before the Hon. Judge Tashima and is scheduled to last two weeks. It is open to the public and supporters of Mexican American Studies, Ethnic and Gender studies are invited to attend.

For more information about the trial and attending please contact tucsonmastrial@gmail.com.

MAS Trial -Tucson  

Anita Fernández-Information Coordinator

Federal Court Decision on Tucson, Arizona’s Ban of Mexican-American Studies to be Appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

Here is the latest word on the recent court decision on the banning of the Tucson, Arizona Mexican-American program. The fight will continue. Supporters of the program have announced that they will appeal the decision to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

While the case continues on in the courts, interest in multicultural literature is reported to be soaring. Censorship appears to have drawn students across the nation to ethnic studies. Even the young students who watched the books being packed in boxes and taken away in their Tucson, Arizona high school classrooms have been given the opportunity to be taught outside the confines of the school district. Their teacher, Curtis Acosta, teaches a Chicano literature class at John Valenzuela Youth Center in South Tucson on Sundays. Moreover, Prescott College is now offering the students college credit for their study, ironically, the same study that was deemed too dangerous by the State of Arizona.

This raises an interesting and disturbing question. It seems that in a class-based society, only those privileged to continue on to college will have an opportunity to critically explore these deeper questions and assumptions underlying the power relations in our society. But all citizens in a democracy need this type of inquiry if they are to engage in the body politic. Given that many students will end their studies at the high school door, what are the implications for the kind of society we are forming?

We will be exploring the politics of education in the journal’s next issue on “Who Defines the Public in Public Education?”

The Latest on the Federal Court Decision on the Banning of the Mexican-American Studies Program in Tucson, Arizona

Editor:  Readers will remember our article titled, "The Hypocrisy of Racism: Arizona's Movement towards State-Sanctioned Apartheid," by Augustine F. Romero, from our Fall 2011/Winter 2012 issue of the journal. Since its publication, we have tried to keep readers updated on the events in Arizona that resulted in the banning of the Mexican-American Studies Program in the schools of Tucson, Arizona.  A decision from the federal courts has just come down on March 8th.  Here is a link to the decision, Acosta v. Huppenthal .  Essentially, the law, HB 2281, was upheld except for one provision that barred courses "designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group."    The court upheld other provisions of the law that bar courses promoting the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote racial or class resentment, and those that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals. 

 We provide both a press release from the Save Ethnic Studies website about a possible appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and a statement from the Office of the Attorney General.

Statement from Save Ethnic Studies Website:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, March 11, 2013

Contact:

Law Offices of Richard M. Martinez

(520) 327-47-97

SES Statement on Tashima Ruling: The Path Forward

Late in the afternoon of March 8, 2013 Judge Tashima issued the long anticipated ruling concerning the pending motions for summary judgment. The motions were initially submitted in 2011 and argued in March of 2012.

The plaintiffs' motion sought to invalidate HB 2281 (A.R.S. § 15-111 and 112) as unconstitutional because it is impermissibly vague and overbroad, precluding speech and infringing students' "right to receive" under the First Amendment. Although Judge Tashima recognized that the students' First Amendment rights in the classroom were at stake, and found one provision of the statute unconstitutional, A.R.S. § 15-112(a)(3) - "classes designed primarily for pupils of a particular group ethnic group", the decision left intact the remainder of the law that was used to prohibit the teaching of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District.

The Acosta/Arce case is not over. The immediate task is to decide what is the next step: seek reconsideration of the decision or file an appeal to the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision will be made within the next few days. It was always understood that this case would end up before the Ninth Circuit, and we have been preparing for this inevitable step for the past year. We have assembled a legal team that includes professors from the Seattle University Law School and the Bingham McCutchen law firm. Their contributions to the appellate process will be invaluable.

Once an appeal is filed, briefing will be submitted by both sides and a hearing will occur. This step will likely take about 18 to 24 months. The legal process is never as quick as we all hope for. This is especially true when important constitutional rights are at stake.

The effort to invalidate HB 2281 will continue. Too much is at stake. The right of every student to learn and teacher to teach the history, literature and culture of Latinos in Arizona is currently prohibited. Mexican American Studies proved to be a valuable educational program that instilled students with a positive academic identity. Much better academic skills, grades, graduation rates along with increased matriculation to college consistently occurred in every year the program was offered.

The mandate to successfully educate every student irrespective color, gender, culture or economic status is in crisis. As a nation we have failed miserably to reach this goal. We can and must do better. Ethnic studies provide a critical curricular option that must be available to every school district to consider, implement and maintain.

HB 2281 is the product of fear and a profound misunderstanding of the role of culture, language and history. These are areas of learning that do not divide us as a nation but provide a vehicle to promote understanding, respect and success. We cannot allow this fear to spread to other jurisdictions and eliminate important programs that already exist or the development of new programs.

The American dream has always included the universal hope that our children do better than we did. Irrespective of color, gender, culture or language every student must have the right to know who she is and how she fits into our complex and challenging society.

The path to obtain and maintain our civil liberties is continuous. In this lucha we all move forward. Your support is vital. Stand with us united in our common effort to be make our nation "a more perfect union".

The educators, students and community of Save Ethnic Studies.


Statement from the Office of the Attorney General:

Attorney General Tom Horne Wins Federal District Court Case Against Tucson Ethnic Studies Program


Phoenix (Monday, March 11) – Arizona’s law prohibiting courses that teach ethnic solidarity, rather than treating other students as individuals, was upheld as constitutional in a Federal District Court ruling issued Friday. The law was held to be constitutional, with one minor exception, Section (A)(3). The case was personally argued by Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne in Federal District Court in Tucson.

In a statement Horne said, “This is a victory for ensuring that public education is not held captive to radical, political elements and that students treat each other as individuals - not on the basis of the race they were born into.”

Enforcement of the law resulted in cancellation of Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American Studies Program after an independent Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) found that the program presented material in a “biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.” The ALJ also stated: “Teaching in such a manner promotes social or political activism against the white people, promotes racial resentment, and advocates ethnic solidarity instead of treating peoples as individuals.”

The State law prohibits courses if they violate any one of four prohibitions, including “promote resentment toward a race or a class of people”, “are designed primarily for peoples of a particular ethnic group”, or “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of peoples as individuals.” The Court found only “designed primarily for peoples of a particular ethnic group” to be unconstitutionally vague, and upheld the other standards under which Tucson’s Mexican-American Studies Program was eliminated.

The Statute was challenged on numerous grounds, including violation of free speech, and unconstitutional vagueness – they were denied. The Court held that the State’s legitimate concern here was to reduce racism, as set forth in the declaration of policy in the statute that states: “The legislature finds and declares that public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not to be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.” The Court found that the prohibitions in the statute are reasonably related to the goal of reducing racism at the schools.

In a related action, another Federal Law Judge had issued a ruling in the Tucson desegregation case calling for the development of culturally relevant courses, an Order that has been appealed by Attorney General Horne. However, that Order also stated: “The State is free to enforce its laws as it did in 2011 when it took action against TUSD for Mexican-American Studies courses, if it believes any culturally relevant courses developed and implemented in TUSD violate state law.”

Office of the Arizona Attorney General

Ten Commitments of a Multicultural Educator

Editor:  After posting a number of articles on this blog about the external forces against various multicultural movements in the schools, we want to share an article today about the dangers of internal forces and misunderstandings.  In the post below, Paul Gorski shares his thoughts about the kinds of concerns and commitments that progressive educators in multicultural education need to rethink. We thank the author for his permission to reprint his article here and invite our readership to respond.

Equity and social justice from the inside-out: Ten commitments of a multicultural educator

by
Paul C. Gorski

George Mason University

Reprinted with permission of the author from the FEDCAN Blog

of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences -- May 20, 2011

History teaches us that many progressive initiatives, if not nurtured carefully, risk growing to reflect the very ideologies against which they were formed. This is a risk faced by multicultural education. So certainly we need to organize ourselves against attempts to discredit the value of multicultural education by those who are most invested in maintaining the status quo. To dismiss multicultural education is, after all, to dismiss ideals of equity and social justice.


To be sure, discrediting voices always will exist. And they will crescendo as we make advances toward greater equity and justice in schools and society. As a long-time board member of the National Association for Multicultural Education, I found cause for celebration when I learned that conservative organizations were infiltrating our conferences. The threat of progress inspires organizations hostile to multicultural education to unleash the shouters and naysayers. We must be at the ready to respond.


Troubling the Multicultural Education Choir


There is, however, an even more insidious threat to multicultural education and the ideals of educational equity and justice. I often hear people who care about equity concerns say, “We’re preaching to the choir.” In my experience, when it comes to multicultural education and advancing equity and social justice, the most dangerous threat comes from within the so-called “choir.”


Allow me to explain: Even those of us who fancy ourselves as ‘progressives,’ somewhere on a continuum between liberal and radical, are subject to the influence of dominant ideologies. How conscious we are of this influence, and how we respond to it, matters. There are, for example, a number of my multicultural education colleagues in the United States who criticize high-stakes testing regimens as “culturally biased” or “unjust” and then proceed to comply with the neoliberal thrust behind these regimens by obsessing in their scholarship or practice over a so-called “achievement gap.” Paradoxically, they tend to describe this gap exclusively in terms of standardized test scores.


I have observed, as well, that, although many of us who would reject the notion that we can assume anything about a student’s needs or aspirations or challenges or talents based on a single identity dimension, many buy into grossly simplified paradigms, like the “culture of poverty” myth or models that suggest there are “female” and “male” learning styles. The “culture of poverty” approach was dismissed in the social sciences forty years ago. Nonetheless, this form of deficit thinking still seems to drive conversations about class, poverty, and education in the United States and, increasingly, in Canada.



Celebrating Diversity Is Not Enough


So when I consider the future of multicultural education, my fear is hastened less by resistance from naysayers than by misdirection by multiculturalists. My worst fear is that a vast majority of the initiatives, practices, and policies enacted in the name of diversity or multiculturalism appear, at closer look, to resemble, at best, cultural fluffery and, at worst, cultural imperialism.


I’ve traveled around the world studying this phenomenon: a “multiculturalism” which has been whittled down so far that its equity and social justice roots no longer are evident in practice. Particularly in the colonized lands of the Americas, multiculturalism seems to be heavy, and getting heavier, on Taco Nights, intercultural dialogues, and multicultural festivals, and light, and getting lighter, on economic justice, racial equity, anti-sexism, and queer rights. And to whose benefit? Who or what are we protecting?


Don’t get me wrong. Festivals and dialogues have their places in multicultural initiatives. But when efforts for racial harmony replace movements for racial justice; when we find ourselves learning about stereotyped class “cultures” rather than examining economic injustice (or at least inequities in access to quality schooling); when we come to believe that cross-group dialogue is transformative in and of itself rather than what prepares us to be transformative: this is when we, as multiculturalists, turn our backs on inequity and injustice and do the bidding of the powerful in the name of “multiculturalism.”


•Listen to Paul C. Gorski, “Celebrating Diversity in not Enough: Finding Authentic Pathways to Equity.”

•Read: Paul C. Gorski’s “What we’re teaching our teachers.”

How, then, might we work to ensure that we are not undermining our own commitments to multicultural education? How might we ensure that we are working against oppressive ideologies rather than replicating them in the name of multiculturalism?


Ten Commitments of a Multicultural Educator


I propose the following “Ten Commitments of a Multicultural Educator” as a place to start. I offer these commitments not in a spirit of judgment nor with any illusion that I have reached any appreciable level of proficiency with them. Rather, I offer them as somebody who struggles each day to embody them. I offer this challenge to my colleagues, but no more so than I offer it to myself.


(1) I commit to working at intersections. Too often, those of us doing equity and justice work become so focused on a single identity or oppression – I have been focused largely on class and economic justice lately – that we fail to consider how identities and oppressions are intersectional. I cannot do anti-racism if I am not doing anti-heterosexism, anti-sexism, and so on. I commit to understanding more fully how issue-specific organizations are forced, even if implicitly, to compete for whatever little piece of pie (e.g., financial resources, media attention) we are afforded, perhaps in order to ensure that we do not organize ourselves and insist, instead, on a bigger piece of pie.


(2) I commit to understanding the “sociopolitical context” of schooling. What Sonia Nieto calls the “sociopolitical context” of schooling requires me to see the bigger picture, to understand multicultural work in the context of neoliberalism, corporatization, consumer culture, the other conditions which inform dominant ideologies regarding social and educational access and opportunity.


(3) I commit to refusing the master’s paradigms. I will not endorse neoliberal or corporate-centric principles by incorporating them, even if implicitly, into my multicultural work. I will not minimize educational inequity to test scores; refer to people as “at-risk” or families as “broken”; or discuss multicultural competencies as essential to “preparing us to compete in the global marketplace.” I will not call something an achievement gap when it more precisely can be described as an opportunity gap.


(4) I commit to never reducing multiculturalism to cultural activities or celebrations. I will transcend the “4 Ds” (dress, dance, diet and dialect). Although multicultural festivals and food fairs can be part of a bigger initiative toward multiculturalism, they do not, in and of themselves, make any school or organization or community more equitable and just. In fact, they more likely will strengthen stereotypes than unravel them.


(5) I commit to never confusing multiculturalism with universal validation. Multiculturalism is not about valuing every perspective equally. For example, multiculturalism does not value heteronormativity or male supremacy even when one explains that these views are grounded in her or his religion. A multicultural space – a school or classroom, for instance – cannot be both multicultural and hegemonic.


(6) I commit to resisting simple solutions to complex problems. While simple and practical solutions may be tempting they are a distraction from what needs to be done to resolve complex social problems and conditions. I commit to resisting the temptation to buy into models and paradigms that over-simplify complexities, regardless of how popular they are. That the town or school district next door endorses a person or an approach to multiculturalism is not enough; in fact, it might be the best evidence that the person or approach fits snugly into the status quo.

(7) I commit to being informed. I will do the work to find strategies for bolstering equity and social justice which are based on evidence of what works. I will look at this evidence in light of what I know about my own community. Moreover, I will not limit “evidence” to quantitative studies; I will seek the voices of local communities and stakeholders in the sorts of deep and narrative ways that cannot be captured in a quantitative survey.

(8) I commit to working with and in service to disenfranchised communities. I must practice the ethic of ‘working with’ rather than working on disenfranchised communities or on their behalf, particularly when I am in a position of privilege relative to them. I will apply my commitment to equity and social justice, not just in the content of my multicultural work, but also in my processes for doing that work.


(9) I commit to rejecting deficit ideology. I will refuse to identify the source of social problems and conditions by looking down rather than up power hierarchies. I reject the notion that people are disenfranchised due to their own “deficiencies.” I commit to challenging any suggestion that the way to fix an inequity is to fix the people most disenfranchised by it rather than by redressing the conditions which disenfranchise them.


(10) I commit to putting justice ahead of peace. Although conflict resolution and peer mediation programs can be useful in the face of some forms of conflict, they should not replace efforts to redress an injustice. Never, under any circumstance, should equity concerns be handled through processes which assume that parties occupy similar spaces along the privilege-oppression continuum. And in the end, peace without justice renders the privileged more privileged and the oppressed further oppressed; a condition which might be understood as the exact opposite of authentic multiculturalism.


At the heart of the ‘Ten Commitments of a Multicultural Educator,” is a commitment to self-reflexivity, and to asking myself – to never stop asking myself – how the work I do in the name of multicultural education is making a school or community or society more just. When I find that I am unable to answer that question, or that I have become so comfortable with what is that I fail to consider, in as deep a way as possible, what could be, and then I commit to doing something else.

Paul C. Gorski is an assistant professor in Integrative Studies at George Mason University in Washington, DC, and the founder of EdChange and Multicultural Pavilion.



http://blog.fedcan.ca/2011/05/20/equity-and-social-justice-from-the-inside-out-ten-commitments-of-a-multicultural-educator/#more-1531

Breaking News on Our Coverage of Arizona's Efforts to Ban Ethnic Studies: Chained Ethnic Studies Students Take Over School Board in Tucson

Editor: I found this latest information from two other blogs and thought our readers would be interested.  They give an account of the latest happenings on a story that our blog has been following.  Both talk about some of the actions by students in their attempt to find their own voice in the controversy. The second also provides interviews with teachers.

BREAKING: Wisconsin Comes to Arizona? Chained Ethnic Studies Students Take Over School Board in Tucson

From Alternet

Posted by jeffbiggers
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/04/26/breaking-wisconsin-comes-to-arizona-chained-ethnic-studies-students-take-over-school-board/

Has Wisconsin finally come to Arizona?

In an extraordinary uprising at the Tucson Unified School District board meeting tonight, Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies (MAS) students chained themselves to the board members chairs and derailed the introduction of a controversial resolution that would have terminated their acclaimed program’s core curriculum accreditation.


Popular Tucson blogger and activist David Abie Morales calls it a “field trip for civics and democracy in action.”


“Nobody was listening to us, especially the board,” said MAS high school student and UNIDOS activist Lisette Cota. “We were fed up. It may have been drastic but the only way was to chain ourselves to the boards’ chairs.”...............


To read the complete post on Alternet, go to:

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/04/26/breaking-wisconsin-comes-to-arizona-chained-ethnic-studies-students-take-over-school-board/

From Huffpost Politics:

Nation Watches Arizona Witch Hunt Showdown: Exclusive Interviews With Ethnic Studies Teachers


Posted: by Jeff Biggers 04/26/11 11:35 AM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/arizona-witch-hunt_b_853546.html

 
UPDATE April 27th: In an extraordinary uprising at the Tucson Unified School District board meeting last night, Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies (MAS) students chained themselves to the board members chairs and derailed the introduction of a controversial resolution that would have terminated their acclaimed program's core curriculum accreditation.


An increasingly baffled nation will watch as the long and twisted witch hunt of Tucson's Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies program takes a hasty Orwellian turn.


Despite the fact that a costly state-commissioned audit has been delayed and largely discredited, and a new federal suit has recently been filed by the affected Mexican-American Studies teachers, the once defiant Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) governing board could buckle under the state's bullying and consider a resolution that effectively castrates one of their district's most acclaimed programs. ....................




To read the complete article, go to Huffpost Politics:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/arizona-witch-hunt_b_853546.html

The Latest from Arizona: Teachers Set To Sue Over Arizona's Ethnic Studies Ban

To see the latest from Arizona go to:
Teachers Set To Sue Over Arizona's Ethnic Studies Ban

Students Flock to Ethnic Studies Courses despite Controversy

For an update on our post below, check out the September 21st article in Education Week, entitled, “Tucson Students Aren't Deterred by Ethnic-Studies Controversy.”

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/22/04ethnic_ep.h30.html

The Latest News from Arizona’s Ban on Certain Ethnic Studies Classes

According to an Education Week article today, Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne is moving ahead in his threat to reduce the Tucson Unified School District’s budget by 10 percent for not conforming to the new state legislation banning ethnic studies courses that are geared toward one particular ethnic group. The law goes into effect on December 31st. As we mentioned in our earlier blog posts, the districts believe they are not violating the law. They argue that their ethnic studies courses are open to all students, and therefore, do not violate the new law, H.B. 2281.

In his disagreement with their characterization of their program, Horne requested in a letter to John Carroll, the Superintendent of Tucson Unified, that all the classes be videotaped in their entirety. Apparently, if the district refuses to videotape them, Horne “will offer that refusal as evidence to the administrative law judge that the school district has deliberately hidden facts that would show that the district is in noncompliance with H.B. 2281."

Below is the letter sent by Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne to John Carroll, the Superintendent of the Tucson Unified School District so our readers can read it for themselves.

The Arizona Bill and the Politicizing of Education: A Response to NY Times Commentator Stanley Fish

The meaning of Arizona HB 2281 that we posted below is perhaps best understood by analyzing it within the political and social context that motivated its passage. In the May 17th issue of the New York Times, commentator Stanley Fish chooses instead to examine the conflict within two philosophical paradigms. Fish’s concern is not with the motivation behind HB 2281 but rather with arguments around its justification or lack of justification. His argument leaves open many questions.

What is Fish’s argument? On the one side, Fish portrays the ethnic studies program at the Tucson Unified School District as an example of attempts to politicize education by indoctrinating students into certain beliefs about social justice that will lead to actions consistent with that political agenda. He writes:

The Social Justice Education Project means what its title says: students are to be brought to see what the prevailing orthodoxy labors to occlude so that they can join the effort to topple it. To this end the Department of Mexican American Studies (I quote again from its Web site) pledges to "work toward the invoking of a critical consciousness within each and every student" and "promote and advocate for social and educational transformation."

While students may act on beliefs they are exposed to, Fish objects to teaching that sets out to agitate rather than educate. Fearing indoctrination, Fish sees the Tucson program as a “Trojan horse of a political agenda” and one that ”the people of Arizona should indeed be concerned.” Let’s disentangle a few points first. Is Fish intending to include in his charge that the ethnic studies program is violating the new Arizona bill. If one looks at the website http://www.tusd1.org/contents/depart/mexicanam/model.asp , nothing that is mentioned seems to violate the details of the law that stipulates that curriculum should not: "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." And, of course, this is the argument that the school district is making. Perhaps, Fish isn’t accusing the district of this. His argument is more subtle, and as a result, more in need of critical examination.

On the other side, Fish sees HB 2281 attempts to ban certain ethnic courses in the public school as a similar attempt to politicize education. Rather than removing politics from schools, House Bill 2281 mandates an opposing political ideology of individual rights. Fish writes:

The idea of treating people as individuals is certainly central to the project of Enlightenment liberalism, and functions powerfully in much of the nation’s jurisprudence. But it is an idea, not a commandment handed down from on high, and as such it deserves to be studied, not worshipped. The authors of House Bill 2281 don’t want students to learn about the ethic of treating people equally; they want them to believe in it (as you might believe in the resurrection), and therefore to believe, as they do, that those who interrogate it and show how it has sometimes been invoked in the service of nefarious purposes must be banished from public education.

Fish is right in seeing the state’s solution to what it sees as politicizing education by politicizing it to serve its own agenda as wrongheaded. In his attempt to avoid both the school district and the state legislature's attempts to politicize education, Fish proposes that we should return to an objective, neutral concept of education as a pursuit of knowledge where all sides are presented in a fair-minded way. Fish’s concept raises a number of questions that need to be further examined because his critique of an approach that apparently is serving an underserved population well will have consequences.

What does it mean to politicize education? What would constitute a neutral, objective approach to education? In one sense, public education is a political endeavor in the broadest sense of the word. It serves to reproduce in the young the necessary skills, knowledge and dispositions to function effectively in the political life of the nation. But perhaps Fish has in mind a more narrow sense of politicizing, one which narrows the choices available consistent with a particular ideological stance. Indeed, this more narrow sense is contradictory to the larger understanding of the political philosophy of a liberal democratic society. Although this larger political philosophy rules out the narrowing of the curriculum to reflect only a particular partisan view, it isn’t clear that a neutral presentation of both sides of an issue will necessarily provide the kind of critical awareness that Fish values. If students come with certain assumptions that are often embedded in the conventional thinking of their time, would a neutral presentation of sides largely leave the dominant assumptions unexamined in any meaningful way? And would students really care about the implications of their thinking?

This is the thinking that not only underlies Paulo Freire’s thought that Fish criticizes, but it also underlies the approach that goes back to Socrates. For in any philosophical dialogue, Socrates always starts with where his opponents are and simply challenges them with questions until they come to see the problems in their own ways of thinking and realize that what they thought they knew they never really knew at all. Creating cognitive dissonance was part of the educational journey. Indeed, an education that reveals and uncovers the injustices embedded in the dominant forms of thinking that have been internalized in the minds of the students leads to a truer, more objective understanding of the reality that Fish so values. That such an education becomes transformative and may lead to action follows not from the attempt to indoctrinate or agitate that Fish claims, but rather from the journey that the student has embarked upon. Of course, any particular incident of teaching can involve a betrayal of the intent here, but it shouldn’t lead us to the kind of generalizations that Fish makes.

Stanley Fish, "Arizona: The Gift That Keeps On Giving," New York Times, May 17, 2010

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/arizona-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/

Arizona’s Other Bill: What Does it Say

While much of the nation’s attention has been on Arizona’s law on illegal immigration and its implications for racial profiling, another bill has surfaced over the elimination of certain ethnic studies programs in the schools. While we will have more to say about HB 2881 later, we thought readers would want to read the bill for themselves.

From the Arizona State Legislature Website:
House of Representatives
HB 2281
prohibited courses; discipline; schools


HB 2281 prohibits a school district or charter school from including courses or classes that either promote the overthrow of the United States government or promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

History

The State Board of Education (SBE) must prescribe a minimum course of study, incorporating Arizona’s academic standards, to be taught in Arizona public schools (Arizona Revised Statutes (A.R.S.) § 15-701). School district governing boards must approve the course of study, including the basic textbook for each approved course and all other units recommended for credit before implementing each course in both elementary and high schools. Pursuant to A.R.S. § 15-701.01, a governing board may adopt courses of study that are in addition to or higher than that prescribed by the SBE.

Current law requires the principal of each school to ensure that all rules pertaining to the discipline, suspension, and expulsion of pupils are communicated to students at the beginning of each school year. All cases of suspension must be for good cause and must be reported within five days to the governing board by the superintendent or person imposing the suspension. The school district governing board is required to post regular notices and take minutes of any hearing concerning the discipline, suspension, or expulsion of a pupil (A.R.S § 15-843).

Provisions

• States that the Legislature finds and declares that public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.

• Prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:

Ø Promote the overthrow of the United States government.

Ø Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

Ø Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.

Ø Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

• States that if the SBE determines that a school district or charter school is offering a course that violates this act, the SBE must direct the Superintendent of Public Instruction (Superintendent) to notify the school district or charter school that it is in violation.

• Stipulates that if the SBE determines that the school district or charter school has failed to comply within 60 days after a notice has been issued by the Superintendent, the SBE may direct the ADE to withhold up to 10% of the monthly apportionment of state aid that would otherwise be due to the school district or charter school and requires ADE to adjust the school district or charter school’s apportionment accordingly.

• Specifies when the SBE determines that the school district or charter school is in compliance with not offering a prohibited course, ADE must restore the full amount of state aid payments to the school district or charter school.

• Stipulates that actions taken under this act are subject to appeal pursuant to laws relating to uniform administrative hearing procedures.

• States that this act cannot be construed to restrict or prohibit:

Ø Courses or classes for Native American pupils that are required to comply with federal law.

Ø The grouping of pupils according to academic performance, including capability in the English language, that may result in a disparate impact by ethnicity.

Ø Courses or classes that include the history of any ethnic group and that are open to all students, unless the course or class violates this act.

• Prohibits rules pertaining to the discipline, suspension, and expulsion of pupils from being based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or ancestry.

• States that if the ADE, the Auditor General, or the Attorney General determines that a school district is substantially and deliberately not in compliance with pupil disciplinary actions and if the school district has failed to correct the deficiency within 90 days after receiving notice from the ADE, the Superintendent may withhold the monies the school district would otherwise be entitled to receive from the date of the determination of noncompliance until the ADE determines that the school district is in compliance.