Ethnology Should Be Taught Without Religious Prayer – Orange County Register

Since 2016, many Californians and advocacy groups have engaged in public debates regarding the state’s piloting of ethnic studies, first through a curriculum-based curriculum. state model and is now a required high school course. On the one hand, advocates cite the educational and spiritual benefits of teaching ethnography as evidence for large-scale applications. On the other hand, critics scrutinize the philosophical underpinnings of critical theory in both the State Approved Ethnic Studies Model (ESMC) Curriculum and the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. save the liberated nation.

In September 2021, my group California for Equal Rights Foundation and three parents in San Diego sued the California Department of Education (CDE), SBE, and the State of California for the promotion of two questionable claims in the ESMC. Our legal challenge was successful because the defendants entered a settlement with us last month and agreed to remove the assertions “In Lak Ech” and “the Ashe” from the state model. In doing so, state authorities affirm their “continued and enduring commitment to ensuring appropriate treatment for religion in the context of secular public education.” Unfortunately, our lawsuit has been mischaracterized as a right-wing “indigenous eradication” act and a ban on Indigenous philosophy.

Such crude accusations are unnecessarily inaccurate and inflammatory.

Knowledge cannot be banned simply because of the removal of two religious songs

Today, the phrases “forbidden books” or “forbidden knowledge” are misused by political experts to cause emotional antagonism to unorthodox efforts to challenge the educational status quo. It is a political overreaction that generalizes dissent as an attack on free speech. Our legal challenge is not intended to prohibit or restrict the teaching of Indigenous cultures or Indigenous philosophy. All sample lessons for Chicano Studies and Native American Studies remain intact in the ESMC. Nor are we asking the court to delete the entire “In Lak Ech” assertion still contained in Chapter 5 of the updated ESMC, just without the 20 recitations of Tezkatlipok, Quetzalkoat, Huitzilopochtli, Xipe Totek, and Hunab Ku.

The key statement we made in the narrowly tailored challenge was whether or not any government organization should use taxpayer resources to endorse religious practices, including both repeated affirmations of thanksgiving to the six Aztec, Maya, and Yoruba gods in the name of affirmation or energizing. One need not urge students to call on Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, or Paul the Apostle repeatedly to teach Christian history. At the same time, is it necessary for educators to use modern reinterpretations of ancient Aztec and Toltec religious hymns to facilitate learning about indigenous societies?

Thus, a central fact concerning the lawsuit, beyond the technical differences between Mayan and Aztec histories, is just this: whether the State of California can use public resources to promote religion instead. because of non-religion, do certain religions compare to others?

Ethnic Studies should be taught constructively

While California was the first U.S. state to mandate ethnicity studies for all public schools, the issue remains unresolved in terms of implementation at the local level. A more consequential issue, beyond our legal investigation, is that each California school district needs to adopt a curriculum of ethnic studies that prepares students to “become global citizens with an appreciation high value for the contributions of many cultures,” as required by law. Like any new discipline, ethnography must be seen as a serious academic endeavor rooted in experimental experimentation and re-examination, not dogmatic assumptions about race. , racism and power.

Notably, the vast majority of the public, of ethnic and political backgrounds, wanted a more balanced way of teaching ethnographic subjects, different from the critical pedagogical lens in the ESMC.