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Rumpus Book ClubArizona Bans Books
Arizona has found the Tuscon Unifed School District’s Mexican American studies program in violation of a ruling that prohibits courses and classes that ‘promote the overthrow of the United States government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.’
Along with William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, banned books include Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Brazilian educator Paolo Freire, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos’ by Rodolfo Acuña, Chicano!: The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales, 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, by Elizabeth Martinez and Critical Race Theory a textbook by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.
(Via Maud Newton)
January 19th, 2012 at 7:15 am
The state of Arizona does not have the right to ban anything without the consensus of the people. This “law” was not a law created from the will of the people, but from a few, select, frightened individuals who feel threatened by the rich diversity of thought, ways of creativity, ways of living and being that such curriculum they want outlawed celebrates.
The law that they themselves created to benefit themselves, the words it contains, seems to me to express what the law creators themselves wish to do, which is to promote their own limited, narrow way of thinking and being. They are so clueless of the age in which we are living it is utterly astounding. They will fail in their attempts to squelch diversity, creativity and the eventual unity of the people just as surely as the sun rises and sets every.