Arizona

[asterroc]

In case you missed it the first time, Arizona education is going down the drain, and now there's a second reason. I worry for the baby of a couple friends of mine who live in Arizona.

1) K-12 teachers with "accents" will be "removed" from the classroom. This is based on a misinterpretation of federal law requiring teachers to be "fluent" in English.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2365

2) A new law bans ethnic studies classes, claiming they "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, [and] promote resentment of a particular race or class of people".
http://www.cyberdrumm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=26:welcomeunderachieving-schools&catid=6&Itemid=40

I'm looking forward to visiting Arizona in the future, where I'm sure the children will be learning proper British English due to removing all teachers with American accents, and where their minds will not have been sullied by all those White Studies classes. </bitter>

Comments

[q10.livejournal.com]

can you cite the point in the text of the law in question where it bans ethnic studies courses generally? i looked it over and i can't find anywhere where it goes that far.

also, why would British speakers be exempt? is a British accent less accent-y than an American accent?

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

can you cite the point in the text of the law in question where it bans ethnic studies courses generally?

You are right that it does not explicitly state "ethnic studies", however it is one potential outcome of the law, depending upon how it is interpreted - much like racial profiling is not part of the Arizona immigration law. When reading the text of the law, it seems to me like banning ethnic studies is the intent of the law, but I am no lawyer.

Edit: There are sections explicitly allowing the teaching of assorted subjects (Holocaust, history of an ethnic group, oppression of a particular race) within other courses. To me this implies that courses entirely about such topics (a course on the Holocaust alone, a course on slavery of black in America alone) are NOT allowed.

also, why would British speakers be exempt? is a British accent less accent-y than an American accent?

My last part was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, as I thought was evident by my implications that (1) English is from England and therefore an English (British) accent is the only acceptable accent, and (2) all courses are White Studies and thus would have to be eliminated from their curriculum.

Regarding British vs. American accent, since this the practice of removing "accented" speakers is not actually based upon any law, there isn't even anything saying that it has to be an American accent, or that all American accents are acceptable. Is only "broadcaster's English" acceptable? What about an AAVE accent? Or Italian-American or Chinese-American? Or Southern, Boston, or New York accents?

[sildra.livejournal.com]

It's a stupid thing to legislate, but I don't think it really is appropriate to, at the high school level, have a course on the history of an ethnic group, or the Holocaust, or oppression of a particular race. I think at that level education really ought to be a whole lot more general than that. Of course, it also wouldn't be appropriate to teach a course on say American history and not discuss the oppression of the Native Americans or slavery or Jim Crow laws. But a single one of those things should not be a whole high school level course.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I don't think it really is appropriate to, at the high school level, have a course on the history of an ethnic group, or the Holocaust, or oppression of a particular race. I think at that level education really ought to be a whole lot more general than that.

I disagree. One way to get general is to cover many races or geographic regions in each and every semester, as you propose. Another way is to have each semester focus on a different race or geographic region, and then since you have a different one every semester you do cover everything. I had a semester of history in high school that focused on India, and it was one of my favorites. I also had a semester of history that focused on the Roman empire. I don't see either of these as inappropriate, despite the fact that they each focused on the history of one ethnic group.

My mother teaches a course on Asian literature from the classics through modern Asian-American authors, in a high school with a high Asian population. This is content NOT taught in other English classes at her school, which is why she developed it originally. Maybe if this content were integrated into the other classes it would be appropriate to do away with her course, but it isn't taught in the others so without this "ethnic studies" class, it's content the students will never learn. And it's not just Asian students taking her class; while there are more Asians than in other English electives, there's lots of blacks, whites, and Hispanics in the class as well.

[sildra.livejournal.com]

My best history class in high school covered Indian independence and the Pakistani split, South African independence and Apartheid, Israel, Japan from WWII on, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution and the founding of Taiwan, and the Cold War, including the Vietnam war, but mostly focusing on the interactions between the US and the Soviet Union. We spent a few weeks on each of those things. More than that would have meant excluding some of the others. Yeah, we didn't cover them in depth, but we covered them in as much depth as, say, European history, where we had to cover from 1450-1990 in one year, or American history which was from the neolithic to 1990 (yeah, we barely covered the neolithic or anything after Ford became president). Because depth is really just not the point of high school.

Here's the thing. You were probably a good student and took four years of social studies. So was I. But, at least in California where I grew up, that was not required, so the only people who did it were the honors kids--that's not even all of the college-bound, who were themselves a small fraction of the student body. In fact, my high school didn't offer 10th grade (European) history as a non-honors/AP class, so most kids couldn't have taken four years even if they'd wanted to. If each semester is too specialized, you're going to get big gaps in things that people expect you to know.

And if people do want to learn these things in depth, most colleges offer a whole variety of semester-long courses in the history of all sorts of regions and demographics. I took a couple of those, too.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Both statewide and nationwide education standards always say that topics X, Y, and Z should be taught within the grades A-D. Usual grade breakdowns are K-5, 6-8, 9-12. They do not specify whether students should get X-Z mixed together for each year, or if they should get separate units or Semesters of each, so it is at the discretion of the teachers or school systems, much like math teachers can choose to put all of say literal equations into one semester, or can intersperse it with reading graphs.

I'm not talking about special students here, I'm talking about different interpretations of existing national and state mandated education standards. Where do some random lawmakers get off thinking they knw better then the educators and historians who developed those standards to deliberately allow flexibility in how to present or group the material?

[sildra.livejournal.com]

Well, I did start out by saying I thought it was a stupid thing to legislate. I was just pointing out that I could see a clear justification for the policy beyond merely that the legislators were racist.