A few weeks after Arizona approved a controversial K-12 curriculum change, its sidekick in Texas followed suit. While Arizona banned Ethnic Studies, slamming a controversial king on the table, Texas has pulled out an ace—refashioning its entire social studies curriculum.
In Texas, the changes will affect almost 5 million public school students every year over the next decade and countless more students in other states. Since Texas is the leading consumer of textbooks and dominates the market, writers and publishers base their materials on the standards in Texas.
There is a glaring directive in these moves by Arizona and Texas lawmakers and educators. They are truly coming from the same suit.
These Texas and Arizona leaders want their curricula to breed even more American patriotism. They are eliminating the relatively few oppositional spaces, ideas, principles, figures, and terms. They are removing the small amount of educational elements that millions of AALANAs (African-Americans, Latino/as, Asians, and Native Americans) and progressive Whites have fought for decades to insert into the curricula.
Conceptualizing this dynamic, I started to ask a series of whys. Why this massive push to find and remove those oppositional needles in those haystacks of patriotism? Why is there a mounting desire in these two states for teachers to teach the status quo on steroids, for books to preach the status quo on steroids? Why are so many Whites and right-wing AALANAs supporting these changes? Why allow the framing of educational policy as political when the de-politicized educational frame has been so effective in masquerading status quo educational policy as apolitical? [This last question, which I discussed in my previous blog, is particularly important. One Republican Texas board of education member in support of the curricula reforms, David Bradley, surprisingly told the Associated Press the curriculum revision process (arguably the most important educational policy procedure in our nation) has always been political.]
I think the answer to these questions lies in three words—three words that are causing and will continue to cause massive conflicts and changes in our educational system—Latino/a population growth, particularly under the age of 20. This is not just as a result of immigration but also birth rates. For instance in Arizona, the Latina birth rate is twice that of Whites.
Whites have long dominated these states, but their supremacy is viciously being assailed by a rapidly growing Latino population. There is no way the stop the growth. Legalizing harassment and discrimination will have minimal effects on the expansion.
