La Raza: Arizona Teachers Suing To Restore Racist Program
As an educator, I refused to be complicit in a curriculum that engendered racial hostility, irresponsibly demeaned America’s civil institutions, undermined our public servants, discounted any virtues in Western civilization and taught disdain for American sovereignty. – John Ward, former teacher at Tucson High Magnet School.
Eliminating a radical La Raza (“The Race”) studies program in an Arizona public school district is unconstitutional and restricts free speech, according to a group of teachers who are suing the state to reinstate the taxpayer-financed curriculum that one instructor says “ignited racial hostility.”
The Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American/Raza Studies program was eliminated earlier this year when the state enacted a measure — HB 2281 — to stop funding ethnic studies curriculums that advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government.
In 1998 the district created the Mexican American/Raza Studies division — renamed “Mexican-American Studies” last year to sound less extremist — to promote the “Chicano agenda.”
A few years ago a Hispanic history teacher in the district, John Ward, denounced the curriculum’s biased theme that Mexican-Americans continue to be victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle and upper-class whites.
Kids were taught that the southwestern United States was taken from Mexicans because of the insatiable greed of the Yankee who acquired values from the corrupted ethos of western civilization, the teacher wrote in a newspaper opinion piece obtained by Judicial Watch, a group devoted to investigating government corruption, according to officials at Judicial Watch.
Students also learned that California, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas are really Aztlan, the ancient homeland of the Aztecs, and still rightfully belong to their descendants, people of indigenous Mexican heritage. Also, the former Tucson teacher said, students were told that few Mexicans took advanced high school courses because their “white teachers” didn’t believe they were capable and wanted to prevent them from getting ahead.
And now… the rest of the story. …..
Harold
Regardless of your views about what is taught in these classes, the first amendment protects the right for teachers to hold their views and teach these classes. If some oppose some of their views then they have the right to disagree.