Wait… what now?
An Arizona judge has ruled that Tuscon schools must change the way they’ve been teaching Mexican-American history in the schools because the current curriculum is too inflammatory.
An administrative law judge found the program’s curriculum was teaching Latino history and culture “in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner,” and upheld state officials’ findings that it violated a state law passed in 2010. The Tucson Unified School District had appealed a decision by the law’s principal backer, then-state schools superintendent Tom Horne, to shut down the program.
Horne left office at the end of 2010, but his successor, John Huppenthal, backed Horne’s ruling in June. Huppenthal said Tuesday’s ruling shows “that it was the right decision.”
“In the end, I made a decision based on the totality of the information and facts gathered during my investigation — a decision that I felt was best for all students in the Tucson Unified School District,” he said in a written statement.
Under the law, the state can withhold 10% of its funding for the school district — about $15 million a year — until the district changes the course. In a written statement, Tucson Superintendent John Pedicone said the school board’s lawyers are reviewing the ruling, and board members will discuss it at their January 3 meeting.
During their appeal, district officials pointed out that an audit commissioned by Huppenthal praised the program and found “no observable evidence” that the classes violated state law.
A witness for the school system argued that teaching students “historical facts of oppression and racism” was less likely to promote “racial resentment” — something specifically banned by the 2010 law — than ignoring that history.
In Tuesday’s ruling, administrative law judge Lewis Kowal said the auditors observed only a limited number of classes. He added, “Teaching oppression objectively is quite different than actively presenting material in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.”
“Teaching in such a manner promotes social or political activism against the white people, promotes racial resentment, and advocates ethnic solidarity, instead of treating pupils as individuals,” Kowal wrote. He cited a lesson that taught students that the historic treatment of Mexican-Americans was “marked by the use of force, fraud and exploitation,” and a parent’s complaint that one of her daughters, who was white, was shunned by Latino classmates after a government course was taught “in an extremely biased manner.”
The 2010 law also bans courses that “promote the overthrow of the United States government,” are “designed for a specific ethnic group” or advocate “ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”
What’s the point of teaching kids history at all if we’re going to sugarcoat it? Are we going to stop teaching about slavery next?
None of this even begins to sound like democracy…
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