Information obtained by a public records request from Parents Defending Education (PDE) and published by the Post Millennial found that Anaheim, California public high schools have mandatory political activism and “ethnic studies” courses
PDE learned that Anaheim Union High School District approved 16 “ethnic studies” courses which the organization’s vice president, Caroline Moore, alleges “purposely inserts race, identity, and racism into classes ranging from Spanish to Dance.”
“Anaheim Union High School District has peppered its district in so-called ‘Ethnic Studies’ courses,” Moore told the Post Millennial. “Unlike what we’ve seen throughout California, this district purposely inserts race, identity, and racism into classes ranging from Spanish to Dance. Their students would better be served by learning history based in truth and facts, as opposed to dancing out their supposed ‘Eurocentric’ racism or ‘oppressor’ mentality.”
Courses offered include “Cultural Experiences in America,” which intends to provide “emancipatory education,” “Photography, Identity, and Activism,” an English grammar course focused on “The Racial and Social Justice of Ethnic Studies,” and “English Ethnic Studies” — which is a requirement for graduation, among others.
The course description of “English Ethnic Studies,” obtained by PDE, states that the intended purpose of the class is to expand “the understanding of each student’s social responsibility to their community and the world. By encouraging agency and student voice through the use of present social reform, political movements and social justice topics, students will gain an understanding of the world around them.”
The course will require students to “explore the experiences” of several ethnic groups, including “Indigenous/Native American, Black/African American, Chicanx/Latinx and Asian/Asian American and Pacific Islander in all their complexity and diversity.”
Paulo Freire, author of the book, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” which the Post Millennial reports is a “core text for those dismantling education,” invented the concept of “emancipatory education.”
Freire believed in teaching young students how to “demand a different world,” and how to “discuss and prepare” for socio-economic and political “alternatives,” to the system in which they were born.
Theater courses offered by the district schools “foster active consciousness, social engagement and agency” by studying “the histories of race indigeneity, ancestry, national origin, diaspora, racism, hegemony, ethnicity, and culture.”
“Additionally,” the course description reads, “this course aims to educate students to be politically, socially, and economically conscious about their personal connections to local and global narratives and histories through the interdisciplinary lens of Ethnic Studies.” By the conclusion of the course, educators believe that students will have built “self-awareness, solidarity, self-determination,” as well as “active consciousness, social engagement and agency.”
The vividly described objective of each course leaves little room for interpretation — these classes are carefully designed to teach students progressive and anti-American ideology.
This piece first appeared at TPUSA.
