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Mexican American Studies Viewed With Caution By Tucson Superintendent Candidate H.T. Sanchez (VIDEO)

Superintendent Candidate's First Words On Mexican American Studies Ban
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By 

National Reporter, HuffPost

The Arizona school system known for banning a Mexican American Studies curriculum has a new candidate for superintendent -- and he’s Latino.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s is interested in bringing Tucson’s controversial ethnic studies courses back.

H.T. Sanchez, the lone finalist for the position of Tucson Unified School District superintendent, addressed an audience of 50 people on Wednesday, where he offered up his views about everything from ethnic studies to creationism.

“I don’t believe that our job in education is to indoctrinate,” Sanchez said, echoing a criticism of the Arizona conservatives who outlawed Tucson’s Mexican American Studies curriculum. “I believe that our job in education is to inform.”

Sanchez went on to say the district should offer Mexican American Studies if it also offered courses on other ethnicities, like Irish American Studies, Eastern European Studies and African American Studies.

“Everyone has a story,” Sanchez said, according to the Tucson Sentinel.

Hispanics make up the clear majority in Tucson’s schools, according to The New York Times. The district is under a court order to offer "culturally relevant courses" due to a decades-long desegregation case.

The Arizona legislature passed a law aimed at banning Tucson’s experimental Mexican American Studies classes in 2010, after conservative politicians led by current state Attorney General Tom Horne said the teachers were politicizing students by focusing on race and studying socioeconomic conflict from a leftwing perspective. Teachers deny the allegations, and point to independent research showing the classes raised student achievement and college enrollment.

A state-commissioned audit recommended expanding the curriculum.

A federal judge largely upheld the law in March. The plaintiffs have appealed the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Two of the courses’ former teachers, Curtis Acosta and Sean Arce, are partnering with Prescott College to launch an independent, after-school class based on the prohibited curriculum, which students will attend free of charge for college credit.

Those who take a hardcore interest in the Tucson Mexican American Studies ban can hear everything that Sanchez has to say in the video above.

Before You Go

Latino Books Once Banned In Arizona
Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, by Rodolfo Acuña(01 of07)
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The most successful book written by professor Rodolfo Acuña, "Occupied America" represents all that Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne opposed in the Mexican-American Studies program when he launched the attack against it. Horne viewed the curriculum as separatist and ethnically divisive. HB 2281, the law used to ban TUSD's Mexican American Studies program, prohibits courses that "promote the overthrow of the United States government" or "are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group." "These people think you're a separatist if you want to teach and include people," Acuña told the Los Angeles Times in 2011. "I don't want to be part of Mexico ... That's a stupid thing to argue." (credit:Pearson)
500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, compiled by Elizabeth Martinez(02 of07)
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This compilation tells the story of Chicano history from before the European conquest of North America, through colonization and into the present day. The book describes the Southwest as "Occupied America" -- a term that Arizona conservatives often view as unjust and disparaging. Actor Edward James Olmos felt differently: "If young people read this book, they will be strong and proud in new ways," he said on the dust jacket to the 1990 edition. "It's a real education, in the true sense of that word." (credit:Southwest Community Resources)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire(03 of07)
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This seminal work by Brazilian education professor Paulo Freire argued that students learn best when treated as equals and engaged on their own terms. Freire argues against the "banking model" of education, in which teachers treat students as passive recipients of knowledge. His work is studied by education specialists throughout the hemisphere.In a 2012 interview, Arizona Superintendent of Education John Huppenthal explained why he viewed the book as problematic:
The title of Paulo Freire's book is 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed,' and so the question is, who is the oppressed? And as we looked at what was going on in the classroom and looked at what was in the materials, we saw they were putting together a Marxian model in the classroom in which the oppressed are the Hispanic students and the oppressors are the white Caucasian power structure. We came to the conclusion that it wasn't O.K. to be preaching that model in the classroom.
 (credit:Continuum)
Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, by Bill Bigelow(04 of07)
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A collection of essays, interviews, lesson plans and other materials, Rethinking Columbus aims to change the way students understand the first interactions between the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Europeans. One contributing author, Tucson's own Leslie Silko, boasts a Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. (credit:Rethinking Schools Ltd.)
Critical Race Theory, by Richard Delgado(05 of07)
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The academic field of critical race theory challenges traditional ways of looking at race and racism. The field's theoreticians argue that supposedly neutral concepts and institutions, like meritocracy or the legal system, mask systemic inequality and institutionalized racism. Richard Delgado's books is one of the discipline's classics. Some conservatives view critical race theory as "dangerous" because some of its proponents view the Constitution and the fabric of American democracy as imbued with racism. During the course of several interviews in 2012, Julio Cammarota, a professor of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona, "You can see the problem, can't you? One side doesn't want to talk about race, the other side wants to talk about race all the time." (credit:NYU Press)
Message to Aztlán: Selected Writings of Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez(06 of07)
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The term "Aztlán" refers to the mythic homeland of the Nahua of Central Mexico. Intellectuals of the Chicano movement adopted the term to describe the southwestern United States. Mexican-American Studies teachers at Tucson Unified School District taught those concepts with books like this one, by Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez, a writer and political activist who helped found the Chicano Movement in the 1960s. (credit:Arte Publico Press)
Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, by Arturo Rosales(07 of07)
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This well-regarded study of the Chicano movement serves as a companion to the 1996 PBS documentary of the same name. (credit:Arte Publico Press)
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