#precious knowledge

By Melinda Kwok

Precious Knowledge is a documentary on the prohibition of a Mexican American studies program in Tucson High School in Arizona. Mexican American students argue their program has helped them improve their grades in all school subjects as well as heighten their appreciation of ethnic values. However, Arizona Department of Education Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne believes this program has a conspiracy that leads Mexican American students to want to overthrow the American government based on the books they are learning. Therefore he proposed a house bill to ban the Mexican American studies program at Tucson Unified School District. Students and teachers of the program argue that the books they are using for their critical race theory class are based on Mexican values and traditions, not to insult American leaders. They even let one of the superintendents come to one of their classroom to demonstrate their learning objectives. However, the superintendents and governor were ignorant.

  Students, parents, and teachers of the Mexican American community rallied together to protest the ethnic studies ban in and around Tucson. They ran under the hot sun all the way to  the governor’s office to stop the approval of House Bill 2281. Drivers would honk at them for support and the Girl Scouts would join in the protest. However, their protest leads to confrontations with the white community and death threats of teachers in their school.

  Despite their protest and their argument for the Mexican American program studies, House Bill 2281 became official; therefore the program will not continue next year after the students graduate from Tucson High. The next generation of students will not have the opportunity to learn about their history and traditional values, thus will be apathetic in their learning as is the usual trend among Mexican American students. The numbers have shown that students perform better academically when they are taught their own history and about their own people. Hispanic and African American students tend to do poorly in an academic system that only teaches history from a white colonizer perspective and only focuses on white leaders. The U.S. public school system does not care to have its brown and black students interests, and thus the ethno-centric teachings continue on.

I recently watched this documentary called Precious Knowledge because we're going to screen this on my campus and have a discussion about it.  If you can, I recommend everyone watch this. It's empowering to see how education can take shape in someone's life, especially students of color. The only reason these students are facing opposition is because people already view them as inferior due to their ethnicity. They are afraid of the scared truths and knowledge they will discover and acquire, which will in turn make them more difficult to marginalize, which is what the majority an those in power want.

This is only the beginning and one example. I'm sure they'll be more struggles like this, and when there is, I'll be ready to fight back with them. 

Precious Knowledge illustrates what motivates Tucson High School students and teachers to form the front line of an epic civil rights battle.