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Textbook Reignites Mexican-American Studies Flap in Texas
Source: Associated Press
Textbook Reignites Mexican-American Studies Flap in Texas
By WILL WEISSERT, ASSOCIATED PRESS AUSTIN, Texas — Jul 18, 2016, 6:15 PM ET
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Democrats, who are outnumbered 10-5 on the board, pushed unsuccessfully two years ago to create a full Mexican-American studies program. Instead, publishers were asked to submit textbooks on a variety of ethnic studies topics that the board could consider for use beginning in the 2017-2018 academic year.
Texas got one submission: Virginia-based publisher Momentum Instruction offered a textbook titled "Mexican American Heritage." But the book is now being decried as racist and inaccurate by many of the same advocates who had wanted a broader Mexican-American studies course.
"What we have now is a deeply flawed and a deeply offensive textbook," Celina Moreno, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said at a news conference in the lobby of the Texas Education Agency, where the board meets.
Moreno and other activists are part of the new Responsible Ethnic Studies Text Coalition, which scrutinized the proposed textbooks and detailed what it described as "multiple factual errors." The coalition said those included suggesting that Mexican culture promotes laziness, linking Mexican-Americans to immigrants who are not in the country legally, and characterizing leaders of the Chicano movement that advanced Mexican-American civil rights in the 1960s and '70s as adopting "a revolutionary narrative that opposed Western civilization and wanted to destroy this society."
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
By WILL WEISSERT, ASSOCIATED PRESS AUSTIN, Texas — Jul 18, 2016, 6:15 PM ET
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Democrats, who are outnumbered 10-5 on the board, pushed unsuccessfully two years ago to create a full Mexican-American studies program. Instead, publishers were asked to submit textbooks on a variety of ethnic studies topics that the board could consider for use beginning in the 2017-2018 academic year.
Texas got one submission: Virginia-based publisher Momentum Instruction offered a textbook titled "Mexican American Heritage." But the book is now being decried as racist and inaccurate by many of the same advocates who had wanted a broader Mexican-American studies course.
"What we have now is a deeply flawed and a deeply offensive textbook," Celina Moreno, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said at a news conference in the lobby of the Texas Education Agency, where the board meets.
Moreno and other activists are part of the new Responsible Ethnic Studies Text Coalition, which scrutinized the proposed textbooks and detailed what it described as "multiple factual errors." The coalition said those included suggesting that Mexican culture promotes laziness, linking Mexican-Americans to immigrants who are not in the country legally, and characterizing leaders of the Chicano movement that advanced Mexican-American civil rights in the 1960s and '70s as adopting "a revolutionary narrative that opposed Western civilization and wanted to destroy this society."
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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/textbook-reignites-mexican-american-studies-flap-texas-40675565