Los Niños Nos Miran
Signs from a June 12 protest against the name change. RUBEN PAQUIAN
Whose knowledge is of most worth? Whose stories comprise our
collective histories and whose are rendered silent? Which Texas children find their communities’
accomplishments and struggles and names between the covers of their
textbooks? Who decides?
The teaching of history – histories – in Texas schools came
closer to true authenticity today with a decision by the State Board of
Education that the state will not only have credit courses in Mexican American
Studies but that the courses will in fact bear that name – the name chosen by
Mexican Americans.
The name should not have been an issue. But in what seemed
be an act of resistance to the very idea of ethnic studies – and to the
sustained, organized advocacy for the inclusion of Mexican American Studies in
our schools, members of the SBOE (mostly Republican and Anglo) decided in April
that their grudging okay for the courses would be granted on the condition the courses be named “Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent.” A name that evoked the demeaning othering from the Jim Crow era. A name not used by Mexican Americans to name themselves. Angela Valenzuela, scholar activist and one
of the leaders of the concerted effort for Mexican American Studies, has written powerfully and frankly about the struggle for the courses and the insulting naming. The name could not stand in contradiction to the courses themselves.
She and her colleagues focused on the content: historically
accurate, culturally rich, research-based histories and literature grounded in
the centuries of experiences and breadth of knowledge of Mexicans and Mexican
Americans in Texas and the US. “Mexican
American Studies” is itself an established body of scholarship with myriads of
serious publications, journals, professional expertise, and academic
courses. They argued that the K-12
curriculum needs to build on and draw from that breadth and depth of established
knowledge and ways of knowing.
What caught my eye in the Republican characterization was
the word overview. "Overview" is pedagogically indefensible. An “overview” is by definition superficial;
it holds the “viewer” at a distance from the subject. The subject itself is static; the viewer
(presumably learner) is passive, observing but not engaged. “Studies” on the other hand denotes active
inquiry, discovery, cognition, exploration.
One who studies engages,
questions, delves, and – this must be emphasized – adds to the subject,
contributes to the collective knowledge.
An “Overview of…” posits the subject as fixed, as derived from an external authority or fixed source separate from the learner. “Ethnic Studies” invites the learner in,
requires the learner’s active role.
That active role – embodied over many months by the
students, teachers, parents, community elders, scholars and allies who built
the coalition in support of Mexican American Studies – may be what intimidated
the conservatives on the SBOE to try to slip “overview” into the title. It didn’t work.
Here is Angela Valenzuela’s post on June 14, celebrating the
SBOE’s acceptance of the name Mexican Americans call themselves and their
history here in Texas. I urge you to
seek out her blog posts from this past April as well as June 13 and 14 to read her account, and her generous posts of other writers’
recounting, of this successful struggle to make our children’s schooling
consonant with their histories:
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Happy to see that the Texas Observer gave us some ink.
Still savoring the taste of victory this morning. I'm hoping that we
can continue to be a presence and force in SBOE policy and politics, as a
whole. It is our moment to own public education. Latinos will be a third of the
entire US population by 2050 or 2060 no matter what anyone does to limit our
presence. So the education of Latinos should be everybody's business at the
same time that we need to grasp that only we can and must do for ourselves
since there's nobody else out there that will do this. Plus, we are not only
abundantly capable of doing this, but what we have still to offer this country
is breathtaking. Why? Because we have such amazing leadership and we also have
amazing super powers—as Tuesday’s show of strength revealed!
Finally, we need new adherents and allies and
we need to continue being allies to all who suffer and whose stories have
similarly been marginalized by the dominant narrative.
Sí se puede!
-Angela
To comment on this struggle and the education of all our
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