chomiji | Tucson School System & Its Book Ban (Reply)

I've been reading, over the past few days, Debbie Reese's posts on her blog American Indians in Children's Literature about the recent fiasco in Tucson. In response to the mandate from the state government that specialized programs like Mexican-American Studies no longer be taught, school officials demanded that books used in these classes be removed from classrooms. The removal was carried out during school hours - in one case, right before the eyes of the students as a class was taught. The teachers will have to jettison the rest of the year's lesson plans and come up with new ones - for general literature instead.

Also troubling is Arizona Superintendent for Public Instruction John Huppenthal's statement about what he saw and heard when he visited one of the classes in question. He was outraged by a poster of Che Guevara on the wall and says that the teacher called Benjamin Franklin racist. This is rather puzzling: when I took Russian history in high school in 1975, we had pictures of Stalin etc. on the wall, and no one flipped out. As for what the teacher said about Franklin that day ... a student video crew was filming, and the video is available online (link from the AICL blog).

Meanwhile, Indian Country Today supplied a link to this video, which shows another type of response:

You can check out the group's Website as well.