A Second Hand Conjecture

The movement of “ethnic studies” curricula from colleges to public schools, is something that troubles many of us who have experienced such classes in modern times. Ethnic studies programs are often called “multiculturalist,” but since they tend to be monoethnic and extremely political rather than cultural, I prefer the term “ethnostatism.”

In defense of the migration, the claim is often made that improving student self-esteem by submerging them in intensely ideological and highly sectarian programs, benefits overall student academic performance. For opponents the claim is a non sequitur, similar to excusing the political dimension of education in a fascist country, by claiming the students there had good math scores. Ideological indoctrination isn’t validated as worthwhile, even if it did help students do trigonometry somehow.

But the claim itself is dubious on its face. So Doug MacEachern at the Arizona Republic spoke to Jay P. Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas about it. Examining documents distributed by the Tucson Union School District purporting to demonstrate that students involved in ethnostatist programs excel in other areas, Greene found a vague presentation of data that demonstrated no convincing correlation.

“We wouldn’t be able to tell from these simple comparisons whether raza studies contributed to their achievement or simply attracted students who were already higher achieving.”
(Arizona Republic)

Another frequent defense of such programs is that ethnostatist classes are electives, and thus no one is forcing anyone to take them. The trouble here is that in a school’s curriculum, it matters as much what gets sacrificed for inclusion as what is included. As MacEachern alerts us:

According to a district spokeswoman, students can count their ethnic-studies credits against their requirement for an American-history class, a class in American government, or both. So, instead of learning about their country and the principles behind how it works, they learn about Che [Guevara].
(Arizona Republic)

This is roughly equivalent to making astrology an elective replacement for astronomy on the the basis that it doesn’t matter what is being learned, so long as something to do with stars is being taught. It’s hard to argue that’s a worthwhile trade for the student, Arizona, or the nation.

Tags: academia, academic, American history, Arizona, Arizona Republic, astrology, astronomy, Che Guevara, colleges, cultural, curriculum, Department of Education Reform, Doug Maceachern, ethnic studies, ethnostatism, fascism, government, History, Jay P. Greene, math, monoethnic, multiculturalism, non sequitur, political, public schools, raza studies, trigonometry, Tucson, Tucson Union School District, TUSD, University of Arkansas

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