Ending ethnic studies and banning books in Arizona

[marmar]

from Salon.com:



Who’s afraid of “The Tempest”?
Arizona's ban on ethnic studies proscribes Mexican-American history, local authors, even Shakespeare

By Jeff Biggers


As part of the state-mandated termination of its ethnic studies program, the Tucson Unified School District released an initial list of books to be banned from its schools today. According to district spokeperson Cara Rene, the books “will be cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage.”

Facing a multimillion-dollar penalty in state funds, the governing board of Tucson’s largest school district officially ended the 13-year-old program on Tuesday in an attempt to come into compliance with the controversial state ban on the teaching of ethnic studies.

The list of removed books includes the 20-year-old textbook “Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years,” which features an essay by Tucson author Leslie Silko. Recipient of a Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, Silko has been an outspoken supporter of the ethnic studies program.

“By ordering teachers to remove ‘Rethinking Columbus,’ the Tucson school district has shown tremendous disrespect for teachers and students,” said the book’s editor Bill Bigelow. “This is a book that has sold over 300,000 copies and is used in school districts from Anchorage to Atlanta, and from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine. It offers teaching strategies and readings that teachers can use to help students think about the perspectives that are too often silenced in the traditional curriculum.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/13/whos_afraid_of_the_tempest/singleton/

[Igel]

1. "State-mandated termination" followed by an agentless passive "banned."

Sort of lets us assume that the agent doing the banner is whomever we want, with a gentle push to having us think that it's the state that's doing the banning.

It's not. Silko makes it explicit: The Tucson USD did it. It's the law, as interpreted by Tucson USD, that's responsible.

It's unclear if many of the books would actually run afoul of the law under either other plausible parsings of the state's or the administrative court's rulings. But by letting us assume it's the state's requirement, they help put pressure on the state by depriving their current students of the materials.

[xfundy]

2. So ALL ethnicities' histories, viewpoints, etc are banned?

Yeah, right.

Cancervatives "love" 'Murkka but really do hate Americans. They gonna paint all the achievers of color white?

Assholes.