Librarians have a big organization called the American Library Association (ALA). The ALA has several ethnic caucuses, promoting library materials and services for and by people of color. Those groups, and you can find the whole list in the following link, decided to say something about the attack on ethnic studies in Arizona.
If you don’t know, Arizona banned ethnic studies in schools in 2010. This past January, Tuscon Unified School District released a list of books they wanted removed from bookshelves, including classics like Paulo Friere’s “Pedagogy of the Opressed”, Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Rethinking Columbus”, and William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. And this past weekend, librarians got together to say this is NOT OK.
This is ridiculous. These are nationally recognized books, and I’m not sure what Arizona thinks they are accomplishing by restricting access of widely available materials to elementary and high school students. I know what they’ll get though– students who are unexposed to basic texts in multiple disciplines; students without critical thinking skills because they have grown up in an environment where their intellectual and cultural freedom is constrained. Ethnic Studies is not about rewriting history to privilege people of color. It’s about recognizing that history has already been written to privilege Euro-American history, and that’s not the whole picture. It’s about the freedom to think critically about the narrative presented to you and make your own decision. It’s about being aware, proud or not, of everything and everyone that makes up the United States.
Read the ALA’s condemnation of Arizona’s suppression of intellectual and education freedom:
http://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=3157
There are some people who want to remove any mention of slavery in textbooks, people just get crazy about what can go on in schools. It’s basically absurd.
Good morning,
Yesterday I posted information about a National Mexican American Studies Teach-in. Please take a look and see what you can do to participate. http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2012/01/nation-wide-responses-to-shut-down-of.html
Thanks!
Thank you! What a great post and response to the situation. I encourage everyone to click through and see what they can do to join the teach in to support Mexican American Studies!