...or maybe a Brooks, here:
Intending to change the school curriculum, Gov. Jan Brewer recently scratched another itch. She signed a bill that forbids elementary or secondary schools from teaching courses that are “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” and advocate “the overthrow of the United States government” or promote “resentment toward a race or class of people.”
Oh darn. There goes the secret plan of using fifth-graders to lead thereconquista. It's hard to see the point of such a ridiculous law other than to gin up nativist support for the campaign of its main proponent: Arizona State School Superintendent Tom Horne, who is running for attorney general. Horne is reportedly miffed over a Mexican-American studies program in the Tucson Unified School District that, he says, promotes “ethnic chauvinism” and teaches Latino students that they are an oppressed minority. You don't say. What's the name of the class? Current Events?
I read over Navarrette's entire column, and the above-quoted snippet, twice to see if I had missed any evidence he might have offered to support his implication that ethnic studies classes were in any way beneficial to students enrolled in them. In those readings I did not find a shred of it. So I am left to believe that Ruben Navarrette thinks teaching Latino students to resent other groups of people is just peachy-keen. Such is somewhat supported by the fact that Navarrette chose to be a sneering asshole about it.
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