As you can see from this San Antonio Express-News column, we had a wonderful
weekend in San Antonio this past weekend where we met as Mexican American
Studies scholars, teachers, advocates, and community members convened in our
third annual statewide summit to discuss the advent of Mexican American Studies
in Texas public schools for which we have advocated since 2014 and earlier.
A lot of work remains ahead but we are certainly motivated.
However, it was extra nice and special to give pause and celebrate our
community's historic victory.
Thanks to our speakers, Dr.
Dolores Dolores Calderón Estrada from Western
Washington University and Dr. Roberto
Cintli Rodriguez from the University of Arizona Tucson for
gracing us with their presence and enlightening us with their research and
scholarship that accord emphasis to our complex identities and histories that
while mestiz@, are also always inescapably indigenous.
- Angela Valenzuela
By Krista Torralva, Staff Writer
July 2, 2018 Updated: July 2, 2018 12:49pm
Mario Longoria, a retired civil rights officer
with the U.S. Forest Service, asks "do your respective communities really
understand what Chicano studies are?" during a higher education morning
breakout session at the 3rd Annual Statewide Summit on Mexican American Studies
for Texas Schools 2018 at Northwest Vista College on Saturday, June 30, 2018.
Teachers from all over the state met to identify institutional barriers,
establish priorities and develop a plan of action for the implementation of MAS
in Texas schools, Pre-K through 12th grade, and for increasing the access to
MAS courses and content within the community. MARVIN
PFEIFFER/mpfeiffer@express-news.ne
Photo: Marvin Pfeiffer, Staff /
San Antonio Express-News
Texas is now the leader in a movement to implement Mexican
American Studies in public schools across the nation, a longtime advocate in
Arizona said to educators at a summit Saturday in San Antonio.
The third Statewide Summit on Mexican American Studies for Texas
Schools drew more than 300 teachers, administrators and community educators to
Northwest Vista College, just weeks after many of them traveled to Austin to
successfully urge the State Board of Education to reverse its naming of a
course approved in April.
“Our inspiration in
Arizona is now Tejas,” said Roberto “Dr. Cintli” Rodriguez, an assistant
professor at the Mexican American & Raza Studies Department at the
University of Arizona. “You went through a similar battle and won.”
In 2010, the Arizona Legislature killed the Mexican American
Studies course in its public schools in a highly controversial move that
attracted national attention. Activists there have long sought to have the
course restored in vain, but last year a federal judge found the ban racist and
said it violated students constitutional rights. That ruling has buoyed Arizona
advocates’ hopes, and the Texas victory is showing a way.
When the Texas board approved adding a Mexican American Studies
course to its social studies electives in April, it was historic. But
advocates’ excitement was dimmed when the Republican-majority board voted, at
the same meeting, to name the course “Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans
of Mexican Descent.” Advocates viewed the name change as the state taking away
their right to self-identify and dismissing an established field of study. They
were further insulted by a comment made by board member David Bradley,
R-Beaumont, that “hyphenated Americanism” is divisive.
Advocates rallied across the state and testified before board
members in Austin ahead of the board’s June vote. The board decided on “Ethnic
Studies: Mexican American Studies” and adopted proposed standards for the
state-approved course. Participants in Saturday’s summit reviewed the
standards, with plans to submit recommendations ahead of the board’s final vote
in September, said Juan Tejeda, a retired professor who taught that field at
Palo Alto College and has long promoted its teaching in high schools.
“We’re celebrating it, but now our work continues because we
have to make sure we work with the networks we’ve developed throughout the
state to make sure they implement these courses,” Tejeda said.
While state leaders debated whether to approve a standard course
for use statewide, schools in Bexar County and other school districts in Texas
developed their own courses in Mexican American Studies. Local teachers who saw
what happened in Arizona took steps to fortify their classes. Some of those
teachers led discussions at Saturday’s summit about struggles they faced
implementing the courses and ways to overcome.
“We strive to get Mexican American Studies in every district in
the state of Texas. That is our ultimate goal,” said Christopher Carmona, chair
of the group that presented the summit, called National Association for Chicana
and Chicano Studies Tejas Foco Committee for Mexican American Studies in
PreK-12 Education.
Rodriguez, an author and assistant professor at the Mexican
American & Raza Studies Department at the University of Arizona, told
summit participants that now roles have reversed. Advocates in his state are
following what’s happening in Texas as they continue pushing back against
Arizona’s “culturally relevant curriculum.”
“The obvious difference is self-identity and
self-determination,” Rodriguez said. “MAS came from us and our community. It
can’t be up to a state or government or anybody to tell us who we are and who
we aren’t.”
krista.torralva@express-news.net
