Arizona's Gov. Brewer Signs Ethnic Studies Ban Into Law
http://www.racewire.org/archives/2010/05/arizonas_gov_brewer_signs_ethnic_studies_ban_into_law.html
Julianne Hing
May 2010
It's crazy times in Arizona, and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is going
to make sure that no one forgets that.
Yesterday, Brewer signed HB 2281 into law, a bill that prohibits
schools from teaching classes designed to teach students of color
about their heritage and history because such classes promote
resentment and encourage students to want to "overthrow" the U.S.
government. Such classes, the bill says, advocate ethnic solidarity
instead of treating students as individual people.
State schools chief Tom Horne, who has been pushing for the bill for
years, said that ethnic studies and Chicano history classes in
Tucson, Arizona, encourage Latino students to believe they've been
oppressed by white people. Horne cited a book on one class's reading
list as particularly suspect: Occupied America: A History of
Chicanos, by Rodolfo Acuna, a leading scholar in Chicano studies at
Cal State University, Northridge.
Horne told Yahoo news:
Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a
particular race, he said. "It's just like the old South, and it's
long past time that we prohibited it," Horne said.
Judy Burns, president of the Tucson Unified School District's
governing board says she will not comply with the law and has no
plans to end her district's literature, history and sociology courses
that focus on Chicano history and authors. Three percent of the
district's 55,000 students are currently enrolled in the 14-year-old
districtwide ethnic studies program.
A Brewer spokesperson defended the governor's position: "The governor
believes … public school students 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," Paul Senseman said.
Districts that do not comply with the law could lose 10 percent of
their state funding every month. Localities are allowed to appeal the
law, which will go into effect on Dec 31.
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