Shakespeare and Native American Authors Among Those Banned from Tucson Schools

Something is happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear.......

They are banning books in Tuscon Schools. 

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/16/shakespeare-and-native-american-authors-among-those-banned-from-tucson-schools-72749#ixzz1jhMO85Gq

From the article:

As part of its compliance with a state ban on ethnic studies, the Tucson Unified School District has banned its Mexican American Studies program and a number of books including The Tempest by William Shakespeare and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, which includes pieces by various Native American authors including Suzan Shown Harjo, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joseph Bruchac, Leslie Marmon Silko and Winona LaDuke.
“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. “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.”
Other books banned include Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuña.


With this comes the issue- what is Freedom of Education?  What is the teacher's role and what is censorship?

What is next? Romeo and Juliet because it speaks of teen suicide?  George Orwell because Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth are too close to home?  Anything resembling non-traditional child rearing? 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light- Dylan Thomas

We are apparently not capable of having free thought and the free exchange of ideas. 

Book burnings seemed to me as I grew up completely unthinkable.  This is in effect just that, the smoke is just the fumes of anger.

Age appropriate reading is to me a concept that is in itself vague.  Certainly there are types of books that are socially inappropriate.  But these are few.  I read Mien Kampf in High School- it was read in the context of the Holocaust in an AP History class.

Next will Rig around the Rosie be banned due to its origin- the Plague.

The subtle influence of government on  education is becoming less subtle. 

Reminds me of the line from Animal Farm, "All pigs are equal, just some more than others."

What is freedom of speech- is it now a state based entity.  Hatespeach is one thing, but historical interpretations of indigenous peoples pulled out of the schools under penalty of reduced funding?  Ah, here's the rub.  It is not banning, it is declining to fund.  The notorious manner that the Federal Government has used to get states to enact statutes or lose Federal Highway Funds.

This all surrounds HB 2281:

Hispanic students fill nearly half the seats in Arizona's public school classrooms, but a new law signed by Governor Jan Brewer Tuesday makes it illegal for these students to learn about their heritage in school. HB 2281 prohibits schools from offering courses at any grade level that advocate ethnic solidarity, promote overthrow of the US government, or cater to specific ethnic groups—regulations which will dismantle the state's popular Mexican-American studies programs.

Much like Arizona's new immigration law, this ethnic studies ban is political interest dressed up to look like education reform. The bill was passed largely because of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne's personal distaste for the Tuscon Unified School District's Chicano studies program, in which 3 percent of the district's 55,000 students participate.

The Arizona Department of Education can withhold 10 percent of a district’s state funding if it is found in violation of HB 2281. That provision put $15 million of state funding for TUSD in danger.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne pushed for the passage of HB 2281 and has been criticizing ethnic studies programs in Tucson for years:

“A fundamental role of the public schools is to take students of different backgrounds and teach them to treat each other as individuals and not of the race they were born into. Tucson Unified District does the opposite,” Horne told The Arizona Republic. “They divide (students) by race and teach each group about its own background only.”

So how did the Native American population and Shakespeare get included.

The government is a government- of the people, by the people and for the people.  If Latinos are 50% of the school population, how is this a constitutional act?

History tells us that what we do not understand, we repeat.  Logic tells us that knowledge is the means to bring together populations. The absence of knowledge evokes ignorance and hate, distrust and separation.

Therefore-

1. Ban Civil War Histories.
2. Ban Revolutionary War Histories.
3. Ban anything written about the KKK, Naziism, the Holocaust.
4. Ban Defoe, Huxley, Niven, Orwell, Sylvia Plath, and any other book that suggests change,
5. Ignore Iraq and Afghanistan,
6. Ignore thought, argument, discussion.
7. Promote the one truth, one that is defined by government.
8. And let us not forget Dr. Seuss- He wrote of diversity and color.

This is on the surface madness and an attack on Dewey's thoughts of the teacher as mentor and evaluator of student needs.

Get out you hands and legs, there is a state who is about to place strings all about you and make every move you make directed as the teacher becomes the vehicle of the Puppet master.

Please think about writing legislatures and meeting with your own representatives should this idea spread.

Prejudice and difference is taught, it is unknown to the newborn.

But if the agenda is to eliminate a sector of the population then Ignorance is Strength, and the bans prove it, for knowledge and understanding trump ignorance.

And of course Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Lao Tse, and many more must be silenced,  They had a dream-

We now have a nightmare.

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