No Ethnic Studies For Racists

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TUSD's Ethnic Studies awaits national exposure

Posted: May 17, 2010 12:26 AM EDT
Updated: May 17, 2010 7:37 AM EDT

By J.D. Wallace

TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) – As an entire community waits to see how extensive a national news program's coverage goes into the Ethnic Studies debate, one teacher soon to be in the middle of it said that his students, about 30 of them, would show what a discussion in his classroom looks like.

"I think we're finally going to get our narrative out there," Latino Literature teacher Curtis Acosta explained Sunday afternoon. He is no stranger to visitors in his Tucson High School classroom. KOLD News 13 was there a few years ago. But this time, the audience of Anderson Cooper 360 is national exposure.

"For so long, people have been speaking about what we do, without visiting what we do," Acosta said.

"It's my view that if I were to come into the class, it would affect what was taught there," state superintendent of public instruction Tom Horne explained at a press conference Monday.

He wrote the statute aimed to end the Mexican American program of Tucson Unified School District's Ethnic Studies, or with hold ten percent of its monthly state funding. He's spoken to Cooper on the program already.

Horne and deputy superintendent Margaret Garcia Dugan reported complaints of current and former TUSD teachers against the program.

"He's been called a racist by fellow Tucson High teachers of the ethnic studies department and the students enrolled in the department's classes," Garcia Dugan read at the podium Wednesday. Acosta said that he doesn't understand the complaints.

"I don't have a lot of time to go around and try to find out why people are critical. Not everyone you work with likes you," he said.

He planned on a classroom discussion of Hip-Hop Monday. He said that the class would have done anyway. And he expected students to be themselves.

"Although I think it's fun, it's not easy, and they'll show that. They'll show how deep they can think about issues and how well they can see the world and how best to change some things they might not agree with," he said.

Acosta said he had only heard that a correspondent would visit the class. Whether the actual host would visit the school remained to be seen Sunday night.

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