The TUSD Mexican American Studies saga continues, and all of the players are using the latest proposal by Dr. Mark Stegeman, just like his last proposal to sell soap, and rile up their base. In a highly questionable move, the mainstream media’s television crews agreed to participate in a press conference by the Mexican Americans Studies supporters in front of Stegeman’s personal residence rather than the District’s offices.
The School Board member was not notified of the conference and expressed surprised by the large crowd of media and small group of protestors outside his home yesterday.
In an effort to emphasize the fact that the Board never voted to remove the books, Stegeman made a proposal last week to return books sometimes used in some of the District’s Mexican American/Raza Studies classes to the classrooms.
Last spring, the District’s Superintendent Pedicone had had the books removed by Tucson High School principal Abel Morado’s staff in an effort to demonize the Arizona Department of Education.
“The whole books issue was a sideshow from the beginning,” wrote Stegeman. “The board never said anything about the books, and that wasn’t the state’s focus either.”
Unlike the general public, who brushed off Stegeman’s move for what it was, the Raza Studies supporters and the local television stations took advantage of the opportunity to sell air time and the circus otherwise dubbed “Freedom Summer” by Raza publicists.
The MAS program is based on the principle of “problematizing” and “racisimizing” students according to one of the programs creators; Augie Romero. “Problematizing” indoctrinates students to believe that the world is problematic and revolution must occur to remedy those problems. “Racisimiizing” indoctrinates students to view all of their experience in terms of race and oppression.
Stegeman was criticized at the time he first proposed the return of the books, at the July 10 school Board meeting, for trying to appease a group of people for whom appeasement is impossible.
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