Course Correction

Classroom interference

Kerry Howley from the August/September 2008 issue

State Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) wants to clarify what kind of content is acceptable in Arizona’s classrooms, so he has called for a ban on public school courses that are contrary to “western civilization.” Pearce’s proposal would prohibit a public school from including content deemed to “promote, assert as truth or feature as an exclusive focus any political, religious, ideological or cultural beliefs or values that denigrate, disparage or overtly encourage dissent from the values of American democracy and western civilization, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration.” The bill would also ban race-based groups, such as Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, from operating on public campuses. The legislation follows a controversy over Tucson Unified School District’s “Raza Studies” program.

“This bill basically says, ‘You’re here. Adopt American values,’ ” Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills) told The Arizona Republic. “If you want a different culture, then fine, go back to that culture.” The House Appropriations Committee approved the measure by a vote of nine to six, but Pearce told PBS the measure is probably “written too broadly” and would be revised before it goes up for a vote.

Comments

Elemenope|8.22.08 @ 11:08AM|#

I was an on-again/off-again member of Teatro Latino Estudiantil in college, and I'm not even a latino. Gave me a new appreciation of Borges, for one thing.

This guy is just like those weenies over at al-Qaeda, afraid the ideology they believe in is so weak it can't stand up to honest competition.

What a putz.

Junter Klops|8.22.08 @ 11:10AM|#

I guess that Pearce's law cannot be taught in Arizona public schools anymore, as it denigrates the American value of plurality. Maybe that is why they are revising it.

Elemenope|8.22.08 @ 11:12AM|#

Arrow's Impossibility Theorem may cause widespread despair and a pining for the Monarchy.

You never know; better to make sure it never gets out.

|8.22.08 @ 11:14AM|#

afraid the ideology they believe in is so weak it can't stand up to honest competition

That sounds vaguely familiar...

|8.22.08 @ 11:29AM|#

When did France become so hot and dry?

|8.22.08 @ 11:31AM|#

"Pearce's proposal would prohibit a public school from including content deemed to "[...] feature as an exclusive focus any political, religious, ideological or cultural beliefs or values that denigrate, disparage or overtly encourage dissent from [...] pluralism and religious toleration.""

Well, at least that'll keep Bible studies, explicitly Christian school prayer, creation-based 'alternate views' of evolution, etc., out of the public schools. "You shall have no other gods before me" certainly encourages dissent from pluralism and religious toleration :)

|8.22.08 @ 11:32AM|#

Well, if the campaign is to exclude classes other than Western Civ, I'm agin' it.

If the campaign is to prevent Western Civ from being marginalized or eliminated, I'm for it.

Plurality and all, you know. Of course, where there are limited resources, so that you can't offer classes in every damn thing, then I suggest always offering Western Civ (it being the foundation of, you know, our culture) and offering the other classes based on student demand.

|8.22.08 @ 11:34AM|#

Well, at least that'll keep Bible studies, . . . out of the public schools

Not to mention Islamic studies. Of course, you could drive a truckload of Bibles (or Korans) through that "exclusive focus" loophole.

RP|8.22.08 @ 11:38AM|#

Once again, defending freedom by limiting it.

Alan Vanneman|8.22.08 @ 11:38AM|#

Ow! Isn't this a little like shooting Republican Arizona State Assemblymen in a barrel? Where's the sport?

|8.22.08 @ 11:39AM|#

Well, there goes me teaching from the Necronomicon.

|8.22.08 @ 11:42AM|#

"I was an on-again/off-again member of Teatro Latino Estudiantil in college, and I'm not even a latino..."

While in college, my boyfriend, a chicano, was a member of Centro Su Teatro in Denver and also belonged to MECA, so I got to know a few of these radical chicanos. Mostly, I just thought they were typical youth, searching for their identity in lefty ideals... but some of them were just assholes.

Brian|8.22.08 @ 12:16PM|#

You mean there isn't already a ban on that?

Dagny T.|8.22.08 @ 12:19PM|#

Oh, so prohibiting dissent is what pluralism means. Got it. No re-education needed here, I promise.

|8.22.08 @ 12:20PM|#

[liberal blog commenter]

ha epipluarch! jokeson you. Emperer Chimpy McBusHitlerBurton alreadys from necrnomiKKKon!

[/liberal blog commenter]

Dagny T.|8.22.08 @ 12:24PM|#

Well, there goes me teaching from the Necronomicon.

Surprisingly, that would be A-OK. Forget about The Grapes of Wrath, though, ya commie.

|8.22.08 @ 12:24PM|#

NutraSweet has turned into the Ultimate Anonymity spammer. We must do the hard, but right, thing and kill him put him out of his misery.

"No ma, he's my dog. I'll do it."

BLAM

Bingo|8.22.08 @ 12:27PM|#

Kerry Howley article about immigration with 18 comments and no sign of LoneDipshit? Maybe his handlers haven't let him out of the cage yet.

|8.22.08 @ 12:27PM|#

Surprisingly, that would be A-OK

OK, children, repeat after me:

"That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die."

|8.22.08 @ 12:39PM|#

I finally get to bring up my senior thesis!

Reading the Open Book of Flesh: Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon as Vulva Envy, A Marxist-Feminist Perspective

Summary: Bound in human skin and written with blood, the Necronomicon is a compendium of evil from a lost age purportedly written by the "Mad" Abdul Alhazred. If instead we consider the book as a splayed labia and the blood-ink to be menstrual in origin, the Necronomicon is revealed as an ur-text of womanist mythos and it's compiler Alhazred considered "mad" for speaking up for the opressed. Freed from caplitalist through cheap demon-labor, users of the Necronomicon could then focus on the real threat: pornographic cuneiform tablets.

vini_vidi_vici|8.22.08 @ 12:47PM|#

This may not be the right solution, but Tucson's La Raza studies program does raise some concerns. For example, students are able to subsitute the civics and American history credits required to graduate for credits earned studying the righteousness of Zapatista and Pancho Villa.

While most libertarians don't want to see government involved in education in the first place, if there is going to be public education I believe it should expose students to the history, culture and traditions of the nation they reside in. At the very least, I don't want my tax dollars used to extol the virtues of Che Guevera.

Orange Line Special|8.22.08 @ 12:50PM|#

I have mixed feelings about the bill, however those who want more information than Howley provides should read this. And, libruhtarians might want to consider their role in supporting such things by helping those on the far-left - including those who don't recognize our borders - even more power.

BTW, here's Obama sounding like an extremist.

Dagny T.|8.22.08 @ 12:53PM|#

SugarFree,

That is just disgusting and random enough to earn you a DoublePlusGood in almost any Womyn's Studies class, providing you correct your spelling of "womynist." That is all.

|8.22.08 @ 12:54PM|#

LoneAsswipe, we are discussing the Necronomicon. Go back in your hole until we are done.

Dagny T.|8.22.08 @ 1:01PM|#

"That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die."

Now all I can think of is how much more awesome this would look when juxtaposed with a random (but predictably inane) Family Circus cartoon.

|8.22.08 @ 1:04PM|#

In his stucco condo in La-la Land
Dead Lone Wacko lay dreaming...

|8.22.08 @ 1:12PM|#

providing you correct your spelling of "womynist."

Dammit. I missed that. "Wimminist" would probably work too.

|8.22.08 @ 1:14PM|#

Now all I can think of is how much more awesome this would look when juxtaposed with a random (but predictably inane) Family Circus cartoon.

Best I could get for you.

dhex|8.22.08 @ 1:17PM|#

nativist assholes are great because they help reinforce my urban coastal elitist attitudes.

another latte, manuel!

robc|8.22.08 @ 1:19PM|#

I didnt rtfa. However, this is yet another school related issue that can be solved by separating school and state.

Sometimes the simple answer is the best.

opera guy|8.22.08 @ 1:24PM|#

Well, I'd have to say "western civilization" is pretty general.

|8.22.08 @ 1:25PM|#

Dagny,

Here you go.

Also, made this one a while back.

|8.22.08 @ 1:34PM|#

A better version, but I had to ruin the couplet structure.

Dagny T.|8.22.08 @ 1:39PM|#

Thanks, fellas! Friday treats; a girl could get used to this service.

|8.22.08 @ 1:44PM|#

i'd like to bone kerry howley.

|8.22.08 @ 1:45PM|#

Warren, it's not nice to hide behind a sock-puppet.

Tacos mmm...|8.22.08 @ 1:48PM|#

Latin American culture is substantially, if not mostly, western. I guess it's just not "anglo" enough. Equating anglo-saxon culture with all of western civilization is pretty dumb.

Tacos mmm...|8.22.08 @ 1:51PM|#

"promote, assert as truth or feature as an exclusive focus any political, religious, ideological or cultural beliefs or values that denigrate, disparage or overtly encourage dissent from the values of American democracy and western civilization, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration."

Communism and socialism are both products of western civilization, as were fascism and the notoriously intolerant Catholic church.

Neu Mejican|8.22.08 @ 2:46PM|#

denigrates the American value of plurality

Western values that need to be protected.

Plurality/diversity
Freedom of thought, religion, expression.
Academic freedom
The "melting pot" as an ideal.
Education as an important tool to protect freedom.
The importance of dissent.

The list could go on and on...
I believe this guy has been indoctrinated by some non-western culture and is an enemy of our way of life.

|8.22.08 @ 2:47PM|#

I thought a sock puppet was when someone agreed with themselves using a different name to give the appearance of widespread support.

If simply using a different name to post things that you don't want associated with your real name is sock puppetry, then nearly everyone here is a sock puppet (or is SugarFree your real name).

|8.22.08 @ 2:57PM|#

Been saving that up since I pwn'd you the Saddleback thread, haven't you...

Yes, you are correct. I totally used the wrong word in an inconsequential joke I made an hour ago. Good sleuthing, Lois Lane.

I'll go simper and lick my wounds.

Kolohe|8.22.08 @ 3:07PM|#

Is my browser acting up or is there only 2 paragraphs to that article?

|8.22.08 @ 3:10PM|#

Latin American culture is substantially, if not mostly, western.

I keep getting confused!

Spain: western.
Mexico: not western.
Georgia: western
Russia: not western.

Help me, National Review, help me!

|8.22.08 @ 3:10PM|#

SugarFree is his real name, dude. His parents were chemists at G.D. Searle & Company. Don't you feel foolish now?

GG|8.22.08 @ 3:54PM|#

At the very least, I don't want my tax dollars used to extol the virtues of Che Guevera.

That happens in public schools with or without a formal La Raza program.

In related news:

6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling

CARPENTERSVILLE, IL-Local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread Monday upon recognizing his cruel destiny to participate in compulsory education for the better part of the next two decades, sources reported.

[...]

While Bolduc stood waiting for the bus to pick him up on his first day of elementary school, his parents reportedly were able to "see the wheels turning in his little brain" as the child, for the first time in his life, began to understand how dire and hopeless his situation had actually become...

|8.22.08 @ 3:57PM|#

Funny how "eastern" (read: Chinese) suppression tactics are gaining credibility. Next, it'll be "re-education" camps for the teachers who resist assimilation.

Oh ... and I'm GLADD to see that this won't bar gay clubs from using campus facilities. So they got that going for them ...

Mark Twain|8.22.08 @ 4:47PM|#

Is it Spain's respect that we are going to lose? Is she sitting sadly conning her great history and contrasting it with our meddling, cruel, perfidious one - our shameful history of foreign robberies, humanitarian shams, and annihilations of weak and unoffending nations? Is she remembering with pride how she sent Columbus home in chains; how she sent half of the harmless West Indians into slavery and the rest to the grave, leaving not one alive; how she robbed and slaughtered the Inca's gentle race, then beguiled the Inca into her power with fair promises and burned him at the stake; how she drenched the New World in blood, and earned and got the name of The Nation With The Bloody Footprint; how she drove all the Jews out of Spain in a day, allowing them to sell their property, but forbidding them to carry any money out of the country; how she roasted heretics by the thousands and thousands in her public squares, generation after generation, her kings and her priests looking on as at a holiday show; how her Holy Inquisition imported hell into the earth; how she was the first to institute it and the last to give it up - and then only under compulsion; how, with a spirit unmodified by time, she still tortures her prisoners to-day; how, with her ancient passion for pain and blood unchanged, she still crowds the arena with ladies and gentlemen and priests to see with delight a bull harried and persecuted and a gored horse dragging his entrails on the ground; and how, with this incredible character surviving all attempts to civilize it, her Duke of Alva rises again in the person of General Weyler - to-day the most idolized personage in Spain - and we see a hundred thousand women and children shut up in pens and pitilessly starved to death?

Are we indeed going to lose Spain's respect? Is there no way to avoid this calamity - or this compliment? Are we going to lose her respect because we have made a promise in our ultimatum which she thinks we shall break? And meantime is she trying to recall some promise of her own which she has kept?

Is the Professional Official Fibber of Europe really troubled with our morals? Dear Parisian friend, are you taking seriously the daily remark of the newspaper and the orater about "this noble nation with an illustrious history"? That is mere kindness, mere charity for a people in temporary hard luck. The newspaper and the orator do not mean it. They wink when they say it.

And so you are ashamed. Do not be ashamed; there is no occasion for it.

Regis Carnifex|8.22.08 @ 6:24PM|#

Well, at least they won't ban Navajo:

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"

Anti-Globalism|8.22.08 @ 6:27PM|#

This guy is just like those weenies over at al-Qaeda, afraid the ideology they believe in is so weak it can't stand up to honest competition.

Yet history shows us that honest competition, in the hands of the masses, becomes mob rule that favors pleasant illusions over difficult realities.

That leads to decay and ruin, fo sho.

|8.23.08 @ 7:13AM|#

Ah! Mark Twain! What a master of sarcasm that man was. Wish to hell I could write like that. Thanks for the above piece; I followed the link and read all of it.

Justen|8.25.08 @ 8:08AM|#

Yep, that's definitely American. Restricting political discussion to socially accepted, government-approved norms, persecuting dissenters, and attempting to suppress subversive material. Definitely Chinese.
I mean, American.

bob|8.25.08 @ 10:36AM|#

I only read one reference to the fact that the artical stated it was broad and needed revision. Now it is time for the people of New Mexico to stand up and work for a good revision. Looking at the education one thing is clear, it can do better and revision is the key. Either way raise your kids to be free thinkers and it wont matter much what ideals the education system pushes on them, they will rise above it.