Thread: Revolution Taught in AZ Schools!!!

'Revolution' one of the R's taught in Tucson

Doug MacEachern
February 16, 2008

"Augustine Romero, director of Tucson Unified School District's ethnic-studies department, is nothing if not candid about his program.

Traditional history and civics courses, Romero argues, have "been highly ineffective to children of color." He has a better way.

That better way, as presented to students in Romero's increasingly influential program, is, effectively, revolution. Or, if that "R-word" strikes you as too edgy, resistance - a resistance against history and civics as traditionally taught, which Romero considers the product of "ultraconservatives."

"With the ultraconservative orientation, people want to believe that if you offer a naive, simplistic, color-blind orientation, that's the only truth.

"We transcend indoctrination because we offer multiple perspectives. It's a higher level of thinking."

If Romero's words sound politically anchored, they should. Romero happily acknowledges that he and all his instructors are "progressives," and he is contemptuous of teachers who resist admitting that all history instruction is political.

"Our teachers are left-leaning. They are progressives. They're going to have things (in their courses) that conservatives are not going to like," he told me.

"Their concern is that it's not their political orientation. To sit here and say teachers don't walk into the classroom with a political orientation, that's the furthest (thing) from the truth."

Romero is a confident man. Not unlike that self-assured aide-de-camp of Fidel Castro, Ché Guevara, whose romantic portrait has been hung in Romero's ethnic-studies classrooms.

Ché, too, believed the world was divided between progressives and ultraconservative reactionaries, many of whom he imprisoned and shot.

In one of Romero's TUSD classrooms, in fact, a video posted for a time on the Internet Web site YouTube showed at least four separate posters of the beret-capped Ché decorating the classroom walls. And a poster of Pancho Villa. And, yes, one poster of the godfather of the revolution himself, Fidel.

Romero's confidence about his program and its future at TUSD is justified. It is growing rapidly.

The $2.6 million "ethnic studies" program in the Tucson school district is an umbrella program for four separate departments: "raza" (Hispanic) studies, African-American studies, Pan-Asian studies and Native American studies. Raza studies are by far the largest.

At Tucson High School, the department offers 12 separate literature and history courses. Districtwide, it offers 25 course sections in four high schools, all at junior and senior levels. According to Romero, TUSD may offer an "intercultural proficiencies" course next fall to freshmen. And, he adds, it may be a required course.

Romero's program has raised some eyebrows. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, who had a devil of a time even learning about the program's curriculum, has seen the program's texts (at last). He concludes they are steeped in leftist ideology and race-based resentment.

But the real horrors of Romero's program are closer to home.

In the past several weeks, messages have filtered out from teachers and other TUSD employees (some directed to Horne; others who have contacted me, following two previous columns on this subject) about what an officially recognized resentment-based program does to a high school.

In a word, it creates fear.

Teachers and counselors are being called before their school principals and even the district school board and accused of being racists. And with a cadre of self-acknowledged "progressive" political activists in the ethnic-studies department on the hunt, the race transgressors are multiplying.

One school counselor, who wrote to Horne, described an entire counseling department being decried as a racist after one of Romero's activists saw an "innocuous notation" on a draft paper drawn up from a department brain-storming session.

The ethnic-studies teacher "grossly misinterpreted" the notation to have racist meaning, the counselor said. The teacher wrote a letter to the parents of his students "telling them the school's counselors are racist" and encouraged his students to sign the letter.

"I can tell you that the weeks that followed were difficult ones for the counselors," the TUSD school counselor wrote.

"There were many tears. Most of us lost sleep. All of us experienced heightened levels of anxiety. Through no fault of our own, we were being perceived differently by our students and their parents."

Ethnic-studies director Romero points to the confidence his program instills in its students. And, allegedly, the better grades they get, once imbued with his program's "multiple perspectives."

But to every revolution - or, if you must, every resistance to oppressors - there is a dark side. There are victims.

Ché would understand."

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/DougMacE/17355

And this surprises who?

Will Romero's Ethnic studies course include the fact that it's Mexico's corruption that drives the illegal aliens into the US to get food stamps, jobs, housing subsidies, free school for their passport babies, etc?

Will it include the fact that Mexico, the richest country in Latin America, is in fact a 3rd world tragedy for the majority of Mexicans?

Romero is using Stalinist ideology and methodology to indoctrinate and brainwash his victims. The legitimate people of Arizona must rise up and depose him. They should have daily demonstrations outside his office until he is removed and put on trial for treason.

The $2.6 million "ethnic studies" program in the Tucson school district is an umbrella program for four separate departments: "raza" (Hispanic) studies, African-American studies, Pan-Asian studies and Native American studies. Raza studies are by far the largest.

Demand the funding for this program be halted.

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt