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Opinion | Arizona should not eliminate ethnic studies

Mary Halling, hallinml@muohio.edu

Louisiana is to hurricane as Arizona is to political backwardness.

Recently, Arizona has been in the news a lot, crazy immigration laws, schools restricted from teaching "ethnic studies" and now the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and several others.

Arizona first struck me this past summer when I visited a cousin who lives there. I went with her to her summer English class, and quite frankly, I was appalled.

My cousin, who in many respects would be considered quite intelligent and always had stellar grades, still confused "their," "there" and "they're." One student in the class was having trouble understanding the difference between a comma and a semicolon.

I knew funding for education was on a statewide basis and that education is not created equal across the 50 states. According to the Goldwater Institute, Arizona has actually upped its spending on education by 20 percent in the first decade of the 2000s.

This increase in state spending and resulting increase in taxes thrust upon the residents of Arizona came without an increase in performance, however.

For example, Arizona's performance on the nationwide fourth and eighth grade math, science and reading tests increased by a meager one percent during the same time period.

On the same thread of education, a new law was enacted with the coming of the new year, a ban on the teaching of ethnic studies or Mexican-American studies in Tucson public schools.

These classes look at history from a more specific point of view than a regular American history class would.

The superintendent of public instruction in Arizona, Tom Horne, alleges teaching these classes divides students up by race (so only Mexican-Americans are enrolled in Mexican-American studies classes) and the classes teach students they're living in occupied Mexico and that white imperialists run the U.S. government.

"Horne has never visited an ethnic studies class in eight years," said Lucky Severson, a reporter for PBS News Hour.

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If schools fail to abide by the law, the state can withhold 10 percent of monthly education aid.

"Eleven educators in Tucson's Mexican-American Studies Department have filed suit against the superintendent and the state board of education," PBS News Hour anchor Ray Suarez reported. Understanding the real history of a place is important, and both negative and positive events need to be discussed.

If a state has a rich history, there is no reason students in that state should be kept from learning about it. Horne and other supporters of the law allege the classes teach students to resist the white power structure that is the U.S. government, which is ridiculous.

Those teachers would essentially be teaching treason. If that was actually the case, then the law would be necessary.

Merely teaching a richer, more specific version of Arizona and U.S. history, however, is not harmful.

The newest piece of news from the Grand Canyon State is the shooting rampage that wounded Giffords, an Arizona democrat and a critic of the new immigration laws, wounded 13 others and killed six.

Police have a suspect but do not know the motive or if it had any political motivation except that the congresswoman was the specific target. Actions taken by members of both political parties will be extremely telling.

Interestingly, this tragedy could pave a new bipartisan road.

"It's a moment for both parties in Congress together," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told The New York Times. "We absolutely have to realize that we're all in this for the same reason, to make America a better place."