Good Brodesky column on Ethnic Studies

by David Safier

Josh Brodesky and I have had our differences lately (he said, understatedly), but he's got a column today worth reading about Ethnic Studies.

It's not that I agree with everything in the column. It's that Brodesky has some insider understanding — he went to Tucson High and knows the ethnic and educational lay of the land as an ex-student — and he's not a natural proponent of Ethnic Studies, meaning that his measured views can resonate with people who might be confused by the heat of the dialogue from both sides.

My favorite part of the column is a quote from Curtis Acosta, a teacher at Tucson High who was beginning when Brodesky was graduating. Pay attention to the word, "intoxicating."

"We wanted to make education intoxicating to our students, so they could develop an academic identity and see school as their home, " Acosta said. "Because regardless of all the rhetoric, if you just go and ask stories about our parents and grandparents, you will find that a lot of hopes and dreams were crushed because of a lack of equal opportunity or educational opportunity."

As long as school is some kind of foreign country Hispanic students enter with trepidation, they're not going to do as well as they should. If something "intoxicates" them about school, if it's something they're drawn to, if it gives them a high, they'll keep coming back for more. They'll suffer through the boring times. They'll even put up with negative experiences if they want to get that high again, that sense of belonging, that sense of feeling good about who they are and understanding how the world shapes their lives and their sense of self worth.

Brodesky thinks Horne, et al, are making a tactical mistake by trying to kill Ethnic Studies, that they'll martyr the program. I wish I agreed, but I don't. I'm reasonably sure they'll succeed in killing the program, and it will cause anguish for some and weary shrugs from others, and then it will end up on the dustheap of Tucson educational history.