Former Senator Rick Santorum observed the other day that universities are indoctrination factories of liberalism. That’s hardly news, but discussing the obvious is becoming more necessary in these conflicted times.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Wednesday that “the left” uses universities to indoctrinate young people for the purpose of “holding and maintaining power.”
After saying “we’ve lost, unfortunately, our entertainment industry,” Santorum told a Naples, Florida, audience that “we’ve lost our higher education, that was the first to go a long time ago.”
“It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college,” said the former Pennsylvania senator. “The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure that there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right?”
When I attended the 9th Circuit Court in November 2010 to observe the legal proceedings concerning Arizona’s enforcement law, there were lots of non-hispanic kids waving signs in favor of open borders and other raza issues. I talked to a blond boy and he told me it was a class project of their Berkeley middle school to attend, and not just as observers. Below is one of my photos from the event.
Invasive Mexicans, the type that believes the American southwest belongs to them, have been expanding their propaganda efforts in the last few years. Chicano studies in the universities have been popular, with dozens of universities offering degrees in the subject. Naturally those graduates then become the leadership cadre for leading the raza assault against America.
Even top universities, like Stanford, offer degrees in chicano studies. Stanford further provides a chicano residence hall, Casa Zapata, so the young revolutionaries can communicate in comfort about their oppression. The dorm includes a mural in which Che replaces Jesus in a raza-themed diverse Last Supper (below).
Anyway, not every young chicano can get an expensive degree in ethnic marxism charged to the taxpayers as happens in state universities, so the indoctrination activists have moved into the high schools. This scenario has played out very publicly in Arizona, which had a particularly virulent form of Mexican studies — so much so that in 2010 state voters approved an initiative to end seditious ethnic programs. (See Raza Racists Angered at Arizona’s Ethnic Studies Prohibitions.)
Below, Tucson High raza students wore their Che-inspired revolutionary berets to protest the cut of their anti-American class.
A recent report from Tucson shows the raza bunch are as revolting as ever.
A new Arizona law aims to ban ethnic studies classes deemed to be divisive, and the state’s schools superintendent says Tucson’s program is in violation. Teachers and students are fighting back.
Reporting from Tucson — Arizona’s public schools chief had heard unsettling reports about what was being taught in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American studies program and decided to see for himself.
As he sat in on a Chicano literature class, Supt. John Huppenthal noticed an image of Che Guevera hanging on a wall and listened to a lecturer cast Benjamin Franklin as a racist.
And though teacher Curtis Acosta did not directly portray Mexican Americans as an oppressed minority, he discussed educational theorist Paulo Freire and his “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” which the Tucson High Magnet School students used as a textbook. To Huppenthal, the message was clear and disturbing.
“These kids got it,” he said. “They understood the framework that was being laid out — that Hispanics are the oppressed and Caucasians are the oppressors. That’s very troubling.”
A state law adopted this year aims to outlaw divisive ethnic studies, and Huppenthal will soon decide whether the Tucson district’s program violates the law and should be eliminated. In a state known for cultural clashes, the debate over the future of Mexican American studies in Tucson is particularly charged, prompting raucous protests and a host of accusations — of brainwashing, of sloppy academics, of racism.
Program proponents say the classes push Latino students to excel and teach a long-neglected slice of America’s cultural heritage — Chicano perspectives on literature, history and social justice.
Its critics — led by Huppenthal, a veteran state senator elected superintendent of public instruction last year — say that framing historical events in racial terms “to create a sense of solidarity” promotes groupthink and victimhood. “It has a very toxic effect, and we think it’s just not tolerable in an educational setting,” Huppenthal said. Continue reading this article
January 1 often brings the implementation of laws passed during the previous year. One that bears watching is the Arizona law that ended seditious extremist ethnic studies in public schools. Since so many hispanic kids drop out of high school they miss the opportunity to be brainwashed in collegiate Chicano studies.
Tucson High School has had a particularly nasty curriculum, turning out a junior Tan Klan trained in Aztlan Studies, as indicated by the photo below, notable for the kids’ masks, revolutionary-brown outfits and Che-style berets (see Raza Racists Angered at Arizona’s Ethnic Studies Prohibitions).
Last year, Arizona legislators chose to end ethnic studies that promoted racism and hatred of America. Perhaps they became concerned at the sight of Raza-uniformed youngsters (see above) who mouthed the ideology of hispanic victimhood at the hands of meanie white people, along with Mexican supremacy.
So it’s no longer legal for teachers to promote the overthrow of the US government in public schools. How annoying for Raza revolutionaries.
The experience of some Arizona schools illustrates what happens when Washington allows deeply hostile foreigners, who think they have a historical grievance against America, to settle in and take over local education infrastructure. Marxists have always targeted kids in schools.
A few decades ago, curricula that taught American values was the norm, as described in Victor Davis Hanson’s excellent remembrance of his school days, The Civic Education America Needs. But now the teaching of US history and culture is said to be discriminatory according to Raza Mexicans and other complainers.
A hispanic teacher, John Ward, who worked in an afflicted school, wrote a 2008 op-ed (Raza studies gives rise to racial hostility), he said he “refused to be complicit in a curriculum that engendered racial hostility, irresponsibly demeaned America’s civil institutions, undermined our public servants, discounted any virtues in Western civilization and taught disdain for American sovereignty.” He was interviewed on Fox News a few months ago.
Back to the current day: former state school superintendent Tom Horne, who led the fight against seditious ethnic studies, is now the Arizona Attorney General. He has deemed the Tucson school system in violation of the law and to get with the program or lose 10 percent of the school district’s budget. Raza supporters stand in opposition: Save Ethnic Studies.
State schools Superintendent Tom Horne says the Tucson Unified School District is violating a new state law intended to quash its ethnic-studies program, a breach he believes can only be remedied by doing away with Mexican-American studies.
Horne has scheduled a news conference today, hours before he officially leaves office to become the new state attorney general, to announce his findings.
He said his findings show the program he has long sought to eliminate runs afoul of the law’s requirement that classes cannot be “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.”
“It is inherently designed for students of a particular ethnicity, and it’s got to stop,” Horne said Friday.
The very existence of the Mexican-American studies program violates the law, he said, and the only way the district can comply is to scrap it.
If school officials refuse, Horne said they should lose 10 percent of their state funding, as allowed under the law. That amounts to nearly $15 million for TUSD. Continue reading this article
Your humble correspondent attended the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco Monday morning for the federal government’s continuing suit against the state of Arizona’s tough immigration law. As a non-lawyer, I found the proceedings interesting, although somewhat mysterious, given all the legalistic shorthand referring to previous cases and numbers of sections within the Arizona law in question.
A local reporter thought the judges sounded largely amenable to Arizona’s position:
A federal appeals court appeared willing Monday to reinstate, but weaken, a central provision of an Arizona law allowing police to stop and question suspected illegal immigrants.
A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals indicated that it would authorize police to demand papers from those they reasonably suspected of being in the country illegally, but would not allow authorities to arrest or prosecute them under state law.
That would still allow suspects to be referred to U.S. authorities for deportation, however.
What good is the law if officers cannot arrest the bad guys?
When I spoke with Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce after the proceeding, he thought that the court sounded split over the four provisions being contested; i.e. would okay two but were negative toward two others. At any rate, he was convinced the law would end up in the Supreme Court. No surprise there.
While I was inside quietly immersing my mind with legal principles, a large mob of open-borders troublemakers arrived and closed down the street in front of the courthouse with their shenanigans. My friend and colleague Rick Oltman described the motley scene: SB 1070, the 9th Circus, patriots, anarchists… all the usual suspects, SF Examiner Blog, Nov 2, 2010.
(The photos below are my own, except where noted.)
Fortunately, there were border patriots there to oppose the thugsters. Ray Herrera and Robin Hvidston drove all the way from southern California to support Arizona, and dozens of local folks were in attendance, such as the Golden Gate Minutemen. Below is Ray with Senator Pearce and Rick Oltman:
Ray got into a disagreement with a Raza anarchist, as caught by AP:
I noticed a lot of kids present for 11 am Monday morning. I asked one blonde boy why so many kids were there, and he said it was a project from King Middle School in Berkeley. What’s up with that? Training little Raza Marxists?
Below are some of the kids indoctrinated into anti-borders ideology.
Rick Oltman got a lot of attention with his Bite Me flag, including being photographed by the Associated Press, below. (If you want a similar flag or other items with that cool design, definitely check out Arizona Bite Me for the real stuff.)
There were plenty of glouligans present, which I thought wasn’t a terribly attractive way to show up, and then I remembered that Nov 1 is the Day of the Dead for Mexicans, so it was a diversity thing. (Feeling culturally enriched yet?)
What’s a Raza rally without a big-feathered guy who fancies himself a new Aztec? Fortunately, no sacrifices were forthcoming.
Oh, and religious types were there in abundance. They are the delusionaries who believe their dreamy trust in pursuing open borders makes them more virtuous than defenders of law and sovereignty. Peace and love! One world!
Below is a photo taken of pro-borders demonstrators taken after many people had left, so it understates the number of friends of American sovereignty, who were outnumbered several-fold by seditionists throughout the morning. However, a credible statement was made, particularly in loony-left San Francisco.
The Mexican fifth column located in Arizona is unhappy that restraints have been placed on one of its major propaganda arms, namely the Raza-friendly ethnic studies that have afflicted the Tucson schools. (Raza means “The Race.”)
The new state law has followed closely behind the immigration law that has been so slandered by the dinosaur liberal media, open-borders Mexicans are doubly angered. The limits put on social studies in schools are pretty basic: no sedition taught, no division of students by ethnic group to be taught a specific flavor of victimhood. But the law clamps down on what chicanos in Che berets want to teach: takeover of the American southwest with communist hispanic control.
At the main entrance to a campus in Tucson, a sign greets visitors with “Welcome to Tucson High, Home of the Largest Xicano Studies Program in the Nation.”
“Xicano,” or Chicano, studies is a 14-year-old program in the Tucson Unified School District that offers classes from elementary through high school in topics such as literature, history and social justice that emphasize Latino authors and history.
In the wake of Arizona’s adoption of a law to crack down on illegal immigration, such classes are the subject of another ethnically tinged fight in the state. Another bill approved by the Legislature seeks to ban such courses, which critics say promote “ethnic chauvinism.”
Supporters of Mexican American studies say the aim is to offer subjects and perspectives ignored by academia, as well as foster pride in a marginalized community.
In teacher Curtis Acosta’s literature class at Tucson High, the walls are plastered with the faces of labor leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara. Students read fiction by Luis Alberto Urrea and Junot Diaz and plays by the Los Angeles-based theater troupe Culture Clash. A poster proclaims “United Together En La Lucha”—In The Struggle.
The proposed law would ban schools from teaching classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed for students of a particular ethnic group, promote resentment or advocate ethnic solidarity over treating pupils as individuals.
The “Xicano” syllabus doesn’t present much of America’s founders apparently.
As a result of being thwarted, the junior revolutionaries put on their Raza outfits (including berets and masks) and displayed their displeasure at Tucson High. (This bunch will take any excuse to walk out of class and cause trouble. Hispanics’ disinterest in education is deeply engrained and shows up in consistently high dropout rates.)
The State Superintendent of Schools, Tom Horne, appeared on NPR to explain his position in more detail, probably trying to head off the MSM going bonkers with lies again:
KEYES: Superintendent Horne, is it wrong to highlight the contributions of specific ethnicities that you might not have heard about before? I mean, when I was growing up in Chicago, they didn’t focus a whole lot about the history and culture of people of color. I realize that has changed in many ways, but is that not something important that kids need to know?
Mr. HORNE: Absolutely. And the standards that my department promulgates, we require in the social studies classes that the students learn about contributions of all different cultures. We think that’s very important. But what we’re against is ghettoizing students. Raza studies for the Mexican kids. African-American studies for the African-American kids. Asian studies for the Asian kids. Indian studies for the Native-American kids – and then just teach them about the contributions of the group that they happen to have been born into.
We think kids should be taught together. They should be taught to treat each other as individuals, that what race they happened to have been born into is irrelevant. What’s relevant is what you know, what you can do, what’s your character, not what race you happened to have been born into. And we teach the contributions of different groups together in a social studies class for all kids.
The job of the public schools is to bring kids from different backgrounds together and teach them to treat each other as individuals. I’ll read to you a brief sentence from a third teacher. She’s overheard the Raza studies teacher tell students that they need to go to college so they can gain the power to take back the stolen land and give it back to Mexico. He personally told me that he teaches his students that Republicans hate Latinos, and he has the legislation to prove it. When he asked him about Mexican-American Republicans who are against illegal immigration, he said this is an example of self-racism.
Naturally, reason and American sovereignty have no appeal to the hard-core Mexican fifth column. Several students were arrested last week for trespassing after a news conference held by Tom Horne:
[The students] gathered at the state education office on Stone, while upstairs behind closed doors, Horne spoke to the press. Horne says classes designed for students of a particular ethnic group promotes a climate of fear and a dysfunction education. He and deputy superintendent Margaret Dugan showed a picture recently published in the Los Angeles Times of TUSD students at a rally, before the bill was signed into law Tuesday. [NOTE: the photo shown above.)
“The class itself is just one piece. But when you have students wearing brown shirts, bandanas, and sunglasses, this is serious. We are teaching kids to hate the very country they are living in,” says Dugan.
It’s pretty crazy to to allow teaching kids that they should revolt against this country and be doing it on the citizen taxpayer’s dime in the public schools. Good for Arizona for turning off that particular spigot of cultural insanity.
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