Ethnic studies: Dividing students?
More than one reader has suggested that there’s irony in the fact that state superintendent of schools Tom Horne, who’s Jewish, supports a state senate bill that would do away with ethnic studies in public schools (S.B. 1069, sponsored by Tucson Republican Sen. Jonathan Paton). The exact language in the bill is “Prohibits Arizona schools from instruction in ethnic studies aimed at a particular group or that advocate ethnic solidarity.” No comments yet. You can be the first!
But Horne says his being Jewish and supporting the bill is the opposite of ironic.
“One of the reasons that the Jewish people have done so well in the United States is that we are treated as individuals and not as exemplars of a race,” Horne says. “And traditionally, the public schools have taken students from different backgrounds and taught them to treat each other as individuals.
“When they start dividing us up by race, it is the Jewish people who will suffer the most. I know this personally because my uncle was denied admission to college in Russia, because they limited the number of Jews who could attend based on a racial quota.”
“I think being Jewish has a lot to do with my point of view here,” Horne says. “I’m shocked that any Jewish person would favor dividing students by race in the public schools.”
Horne says that the Tucson Unified School District has four ethnic studies program, which he lists as “what they call Raza studies, for the Latino kids; African American studies for the African American kids; Asian studies for the Asian kids, and Native American studies for the Native American kids.” He pauses a second and adds, “It sounds like the Nuremberg laws.”
Horne says he’d rather see a good world studies class and a good history class than courses taught by ethnicity.
“The point is for all kids to learn about all cultures.”
For information about what the bill calls for specifically, see here.
26 Jun, 2009 >