AZ Bans Ethnic Studies from Schools

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100430/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1885

If you thought the new immigration law was rough, this new law forbids any curriculum that promotes “the overthrow of the United States government” or “resentment toward a race or class of people.” It also disallows any curriculum that’s “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or that seeks to “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

Also, the Arizona Department of Education has begun telling principals to remove teachers who speak English with an accent from classes with students who are still learning English.

Just wow.

I agree with banning the ethnic studies, but removing teachers who have an accent from students who are learning english is a bit much.

[quote]MaximusB wrote:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100430/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1885

If you thought the new immigration law was rough, this new law forbids any curriculum that promotes “the overthrow of the United States government” or “resentment toward a race or class of people.” It also disallows any curriculum that’s “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or that seeks to “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

Also, the Arizona Department of Education has begun telling principals to remove teachers who speak English with an accent from classes with students who are still learning English.

Just wow. [/quote]

Don’t believe everything you hear , I am very close to Education and I have never heard this

I don’t know, I can’t imagine so many media sources that would lie. Unless they don’t implement this in the schools.

I disagree with these actions. I think it is unjust to deprive people of an opportunity to learn about their heritage, I mean this whites included, there should be European studies if there is black and Latino.

[quote]Rohnyn wrote:
I disagree with these actions. I think it is unjust to deprive people of an opportunity to learn about their heritage, I mean this whites included, there should be European studies if there is black and Latino.[/quote]

That is what private schools are for. Public schools are a waste of money.

Public schools are so bad, you are better off home schooling your kid.

[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Public schools are so bad, you are better off home schooling your kid. [/quote]

I can tell you not a thing I learned in public school, or yet in college is worth anything besides how to navigate a library and databases. I always knew more about the subject than teachers on things I cared about.

Time to move to Arizona.

[quote]Standard Donkey wrote:
Time to move to Arizona.[/quote]

Arizona is looking better and better each day.

My bad Push, I guess I jumped the gun.

It is amazing to see REAL politicians govern and rule for the people, we don’t have any of that in California. I am still in shock, to see people who don’t play the PC card. The 10 freeway going east is looking might good these days.

[quote]pushharder wrote:
It makes sense to have teachers who teach English, especially to new English students, be fluent in English.

Would a school system not want to fire or reassign math teachers who couldn’t add, subtract, multiply and divide well?

Would a school system not want to fire or reassign geography teachers who couldn’t use and/or teach how to use a map or globe?[/quote]

So here is a personal story, Some years back (I teach at a University) one of my students with a very Hispanic name was a student. This was a service course and he was pretty good. I chatted with him a couple of times in English as part of class and noted that he spoke with a heavy accent and had some real language issues. One day after class I decided to chat him up so I addressed him in Spanish.

He sort of stared at me.

“I don’t speak Spanish.”

?! I thought he was joking but no. Here was the story he told. Back in the 1960’s there was some survey work done and it turned out that this miniscule little town that thought it was in Mexico was really in Texas. So all of the inhabitants decided to raise their kids by only speaking English to them. The problem was that none of the parents could really speak English. All of the kids then became fluent in some sort of pidgin. I.e., he didn’t have a first language.

This was causing him quite a bit of trouble since he was, as I said, much smarter than his language skills could support.

I think the AZ laws as Push ferreted them out are a good idea.

You know, we all obsess about Spanish being so prevalent but that misses the larger point that at times past people have been concerned the same way about Irish, Swedish, Polish and a bunch of other furrin’ languages. All of those groups assimilated just fine – matter of fact, a lot of people don’t even know nowadays that their great grandparents might have had it rough. Being Hungarian is just sort of cool. The problem is probably going to be foolish laws forcing mandatory Spanish instruction on all those Urdu speakers in 30 years. English should be the standard language. Everyone learns it because the US is f-ing huge and just because they speak Hmong in South LA doesn’t mean the people that still speak Ukranian outside of Philadelphia can talk to you. While the Balkans are very rustically appealing, they are a lousy social model.

And as always, I might just be full of shit…

– jj

[quote]Rohnyn wrote:
I disagree with these actions. I think it is unjust to deprive people of an opportunity to learn about their heritage, I mean this whites included, there should be European studies if there is black and Latino.[/quote]

The bit about getting rid of people with ethnic accents is BS, The bill will have Social Studies but will not condome any particular ethnic education that could be contrued as promoting isolation of particular groups Whites, Blacks ,Mexican and the likes

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
I can tell you not a thing I learned in public school, or yet in college is worth anything besides how to navigate a library and databases. [/quote]

That’s what public school is SUPPOSED to teach you… how to learn on your own, not to just spoon feed a bunch of rote memorization. It’s too bad that you’ve felt cheated about that (and you possibly didn’t need school to learn how to do that - but many people do - they need to be taught how to use a library, how to do their own research, etc.)

I did hear in Sunday’s paper they are testing certain teachers that can not speak english to an exceptable standard, not teachers with an accent

We had bilingual teachers here in Dallas that couldn’t even speak English. It’s fine though. Texas has banned about any type of learning that doesn’t involve bubbling in answers on a test.

[quote]BBriere wrote:
We had bilingual teachers here in Dallas that couldn’t even speak English. It’s fine though. Texas has banned about any type of learning that doesn’t involve bubbling in answers on a test.[/quote]

I heard Texas has banned learning alL together , books are suposed to be illegal :slight_smile:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]BBriere wrote:
We had bilingual teachers here in Dallas that couldn’t even speak English. It’s fine though. Texas has banned about any type of learning that doesn’t involve bubbling in answers on a test.[/quote]

I heard Texas has banned learning alL together , books are suposed to be illegal :)[/quote]

They might as well. At my school we have tons of kids that never go to class and still pass the test. I asked one kid the other day where Africa was and he said “Germany.” I told him he was right. It was in really southern Germany.