Life is good when you are a Mexican American Studies teacher in TUSD. Prior to this year, for over nine years, only ONE of the teachers has ever undergone the usual teacher evaluation process through which every other teacher in the district has had to be assessed. Now with the federal suit filed by the self-labeled “Save Ethnic Studies” thirteen against the state of Arizona, fear of firing is not a worry. Carte Blanch has been granted to the new celebrity purveyors of hate, and the rich and powerful in the Big Apple are ready to buy what they have to sell.
The Mexican American Studies teachers visited New York City on Saturday, Nov. 12th, at a series of special events at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. A screening of the testiphonial film “Precious Knowledge” will be offered to financial contributors to Save Ethnic Studies, followed by a visitation with Curtis Acosta and Maria Federico Brummer, according to a story in the Alternet.
“The day’s events are sponsored by a coalition of educators and community-based organizers led by New York Collective of Radical Educators, Latino Educators for New York Independent Schools and Celebrate Cesar Chavez who have announced the start of a New York City-based grassroots campaign to both defend the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program as well as to raise awareness of the struggle for ethnic studies nationally,” writes propagandist Jeff Biggers.
Brummer was the focus of controversy at the start of the school year, when Brummer was given regular American history sections to teach because enrollment in MAS American history was so low. TUSD Governing Board member Michael Hicks received an email from a concerned parent of a student in her traditional American history section. The concerned parent wrote that their child, “is interested in learning more” about our “country and its history” which is why the child “elected an American History class this year. The parent describe the child’s “first day of class last week,” in the email to Hicks.
According to the email, Brummer “instructed the class that if they planned on learning from a textbook and answering questions they would not do well. She told the class that since 60% of all students in TUSD are Hispanic, she would teach this class from a Hispanic perspective. That at the beginning and end of this class they would recite a saying in both English and Spanish.* She stated she has always taught this class this way and would continue to do so in the future.”
Acosta is best known for his rap song warning students of becoming Republicans. Acosta’s decision to throw a Mexican-American student out of his class for just using the term “illegal alien,” was the subject of testimony in the district’s appeal of Superintendent John Huppenthal’s finding that the classes are illegal. Acosta’s classroom became the subject of much controversy when a video was taken surreptitiously by one of his students in his classroom and posted on YouTube. The student who shot the video was punished for sharing the reality of Acosta’s propaganda factory, though nothing happened to Acosta.
The Save Ethnic Studies fundraiser schedule included a “Special Screening for Youth” which involved youngsters, “from around the city” who participated in a free special screening of a propaganda film made to promote Raza Studies followed by a conversation with Curtis Acosta where they try and indoctrinate youth in New York City to support the educational sham we know as Raza Studies as well as discuss how to bring more racial and ethnic conflict to New York City.
The “Community Mixer” included youngsters and adults who came together to continue to discuss ways to promote the ideology of Raza Studies. A variety of local organizations will have tables to share information about critical race pedagogy and ways to introduce this technique for brainwashing students into other school systems.
Finally, the never ending search for money ended with the “Special Screening for Financial Contributors.” Frivolous lawsuits and propaganda can get costly especially when you hire the notoriously divisive Richard Martinez, who once told the late Tucson attorney Hugh Holub while in a legal battle involving TUSD, “I don’t want my Mexican kids to have to compete with you Jews.”
The con is on.