Arizona officials go after Mexican studies program

If you think Arizona state government officials would have something better to do with their time than go after an ethnic studies program they don't like, you'd be wrong.

The governor, Jan Brewer (R), has signed into law a bill that was passed because the state superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne, who happens to be running for attorney general, dislikes a Mexican American studies program in the Tucson Unified School District. The program allows students to learn in history and literature courses about how particular ethnic groups influenced history, the Associated Press reported.

The bill, which I wrote about recently, prohibits any classes that:

-- Promote the overthrow of the U.S. government.

-- Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

-- Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.

-- Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of students as individuals.

The first two points are ringers, of course, for Horne's real problem: According to the Associated Press, Horne has wanted to limit the program since he learned several years ago that Hispanic civil right activist Dolores Huerta told Tucson high school students that "Republicans hate Latinos."

The governor signed the bill just after six U.N. human rights experts released a statement saying that they had concerns about the measure and that all people have a right to learn about their own cultural and linguistic heritage.

Of course, the United Nations' record on human rights is not exactly exemplary, given that the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and its successor, the U.N. Human Rights Council, have included member states with abhorrent human rights records, such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Syria, Libya and, in 2004, Sudan, whose election sparked the walkout of the U.S. ambassador.

But on this issue, the U.N. experts have it right.

The Tucson Unified School District program offers specialized courses in African American, Mexican American and Native American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group, according to the AP.

District officials say the program provides only historical information. In the Mexican American Studies program, an American history course explores the role of Hispanics in the Vietnam War, and a literature course emphasizes Latino authors. The kids learn, for example, that Arizona was once part of Mexico and that in the 1960s, Chicano radicals called for reclaiming the land.

Subversive stuff, that.

By itself, this move is one small-minded bill that pretends to be about education but is all about politics.

The problem is that it isn't the only one. Legislators in many states seem intent on dictating to educators how to do their jobs, although the lawmakers don't have a clue.

We tried this once before, in a big law called No Child Left Behind, which was designed with the input of not a single teacher, and which spectacularly failed in its goal to close the achievement gap.

We never seem to learn from our own mistakes. How do we expect kids to do that, if the adults can't get it right?