Someone sent me this post with the headline “Arizona Ethnic Studies Classes Banned.” It’s been all around the blogosphere. Many blogs are saying that ethnic studies is going to be banned in Arizona.
So let’s put on the brakes–if you look at the articles from any of the news sources linked (e.g. the this one), this Arizona House bill isn’t proposing that anyone ban ethnic studies. You can see the bill itself here. What the bill does, according to the verbiage, is:
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.
Regards of whether it bans ethnic studies, however, they shouldn’t make it into law. Bullet #1 would be illegal with or without the bill. Bullet #2 is so vague as to invite abuse–for example, some of my chem classes in college promoted resentment towards science among the less mathematically gifted; I might be able to sue my prof for giving me too much annoying homework thereby promoting resentment of the subject. Bullet #3 is a catch-22; if your students are mostly of one particular ethnic group, you’re likely to cater the class to their needs, and the fact is that many ethnic studies classes don’t have a white majority in the classroom. Bullet #4 presents a loaded dichotomy that isn’t mutually exclusive; you can be an individual and still believe in solidarity.
If this bill passes, it will water down ethnic studies classes. You’ll get classes about people of color that are aimed towards keeping people of color quiet and boring. I hope lots of academics and students in Arizona start making a lot of noise. Politicians should spend more of their time trying to balance budgets and helping the economy rather than poking their noses in academics.
In other Arizona news, the Arizona Department of Education is going to be removing teachers who speak “heavily accented or ungrammatical” English. I agree that English teachers should speak with proper grammar, but if they’re going to be cracking down on accents, I would submit that they also need to fix foreign accents in the media. The first thing they ought to do is remove Simon Cowell from American Idol. I don’t want my kids growing up and saying, “Moy gawd thaht was ahb-so-loot-ly ho-ri-bull.” To be fair, we should probably get rid of American Idol altogether. That action in itself would probably raise IQ points by a standard deviation or two.
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I agree with everything you said. About #1…I think...
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Given Arizona’s track record of late, I can see the law passing, but not standing given that it would violate free speech.
Oh well, I never cared to see the Grand Canyon anyway.
You ever notice how many Brits and Aussies there are on American TV and movies? Our society is very accepting of them, but we tend to pull the welcome mat for people of color from Asia or south of the border.
The problem is that whatever the bill says, its announced goal is to kill ethnic studies, and specifically the Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson schools. And according to the bill, the person who gets to decide whether a program promotes “resentment” or “ethnic solidarity” is the state schools superintendent–the very guy who wrote the bill and has already made clear that he finds the Tucson program to be “ethnic chauvinism.”
So yes, while a close reading of the bill would suggest that no imaginable ethnic studies program should run afoul of these ridiculous requirements, in practice it will certainly be used to shut down any ethnic studies class conservatives don’t like. And it will have a chilling effect on school districts who will be afraid of losing state funding. Sure, a good lawyer could probably fight the state and win, but what school district could afford a protracted battle like that?
Well, we agree that the bill should be killed, so I guess that’s the important thing.
If tax dollars controlled American Idol, you’d get EXACTLY what you want. That’s why a business runs it. Same cannot be said of Arizona’s school system.
Haha! The only problem is that American Idol might get more votes or text messages than Byron. In which I’d still be stuck hearing the office workers talking about who got sent home.
Tim,
Good points, and I like your APAP blog!
I think there are always problems when governments use the law to restrict teaching. Unless, of course, they’re restricting the teaching of so-called intelligent design.
Seriously, many of these politicians are stubborn and refuse to listen to their minority constituents, and I too wouldn’t trust that superintendent to make a decision over what is chauvinistic.
Alpha,
Oi, Mark Burnett is British, as is Jamie Oliver. I’d definitely keep Mark and Jamie, I just don’t like American Idol. I guess I’d have to find another way to discriminate against AI. Haha….I feel like an Arizona politician, trying to come up with new ways to discriminate against people.