The Line: APS Announces Ethnic Studies Courses Will Be In All High Schools
June 10, 2016 – Albuquerque Public Schools announced recently that the district will offer ethnic studies courses in all high schools beginning next year.
Ethnic studies courses will be an elective available to juniors and seniors across thedistrict. this week that currently the courses are only Albuquerque, Del Norte and Highland high schools.
The Albuquerque Journal reported this week that similar courses have been implemented in other cities. In San Francisco the courses were found to bring a new vigor for students, but in Arizona there was opposition after a school district fought to keep the class in the school. And you can see the reading list of books that students would possibly read during their studies.
The Line discussed this news this week on New Mexico In Focus.
“Ethnic studies, in general, is a good area for everybody to take, whether it is in high school or college to be able to be exposed to different cultures, understand cultural sensitivity I think makes you a better person whether it is in business, politics, law or anything that you do,” says Laura Sanchez-Rivet.
“One of the things I was perturbed by was the titles of all 34 books, eleven of then had something to do with race in there, racism, some form of that in there and also, notably absent in the entire area was anything about my Spanish, Jewish history. You talk about New Mexico history, largely absent from that is that the largest part of our population, here in the state, is absent in any of those titles,” says Eddy Aragon.
What do you think about ethnic studies classes? Are they a positive way to make minority students feel more included or do they create necessary divisions? Leave a comment or get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter.
Line Panelists:
Eddy Aragon, CEO, The Rock of Talk, Fox News ABQ 95.9 FM
Lonna Atkeson, UNM Political Science Department
Laura Sanchez-Rivét, attorney at Cuddy & McCarthy, LLP
Harry Van Buren, UNM Anderson School of Management