Indoctrination and Common Sense Interpretation of Texts

The Tucson Unified School District Book Banning

Emily J. M. Knox (knox@illinois.edu), Assistant Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The national headlines about Arizona’s newly enacted education policies in early 2012 were stark. The Tucson Weekly (Herreras 2012) asked, “TUSD Banning Books? Well Yes, and No, and Yes” while the online magazine Salon (Biggers 2012b) inquired, “Who’s afraid of ‘The Tempest’?” in reference to the most notable title on the presumed list of banned books. According to these and other news reports, on January 10, 2012, Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) officials walked into the Mexican American Studies (MAS) classrooms and proceeded to confiscate seven book titles. This removal was one of the final acts in a years-long battle to remove the MAS program from TUSD curriculum. Originally developed in relation to with a 1978 desegregation order, the MAS program, which began in 1998 to help recruit and retain Latinx students, came under attack by conservative Arizona state legislators in the late 2000s. In April of 2010, the legislature passed HB 2281, which specifically targeted the MAS program by linking its continued existence to state funding. The school district initially fought against the law but, after considering the impending loss of income, decided to end the program. One of the unique aspects of the TUSD MAS case is that legislators and other opponents targeted not only the program but also the textbooks that were used in the courses. In fact, the news stories published on January 11, 2012, tended to focus on the fate of the books rather than the dismantling of the program itself.

Although there are book challenges (that is, requests to remove, restrict, or relocate materials) in many different settings including public and school libraries, such an act has heightened intensity when books in school curricula are targeted. Since these are often books that are required reading there is an added element of fear of indoctrination among challengers that is not present for non-required materials, and that raises the stakes for those who bring challenges against textbooks. As will be shown below, censorship is fundamentally concerned with the relationship between power and knowledge (Jansen 1988), and this connection is heightens the fear of indocrination in an educational setting. This article, which focuses on the reasons for removing the books from the MAS program classrooms, is grounded in a social constructionist metatheoretical framework as well as the study of reading practices and is based on research I have previously conducted on book challengers. It will be demonstrated that those who argued for the dismantling of the MAS program and the removal of the books employed what I call a “common sense” or “monosemic” interpretive strategy with regard to texts and were particularly focused on the idea of indoctrination in public schools.

Like many ethnic studies programs, MAS stood in opposition to the triumphal, grand national narrative of the United States as place of opportunity (Zimmerman 2002, 109). MAS’s curriculum was based in a critical analysis of US society and, as will be demonstrated below, it was this critical aspect that led to fears of indoctrination by opponents of the program. Even though TUSD had three ethnic studies programs in its high schools (Mexican American, African American, and Native American), the critical analysis of society employed in the MAS program was seen as a threat to state politicians and other stakeholders in the community.

On the TUSD MAS Program and School Book Challenges

Since it includes numerous social issues including race, politics, and education, the dismantling of the TUSD MAS program is overdetermined (Althusser 1962) and difficult to analyze. In light of this overdetermination, there are many different framing lenses that one might use to analyze the events in Tucson. For example, one might see the abolishment of the MAS program as a struggle over social, cultural, and political power in an area of the Southwest that is rapidly becoming majority minority. According to the 2010 US Census, people of Hispanic or Latino Origin are 41.59 percent of the population of Tucson, 16% increase since 2000. Hispanics and Latinos are an ever-increasing share of the population, and it is not surprising that this might lead to cultural conflict.

Previous scholarly research on the TUSD MAS program case has primarily been conducted through the lens of critical race theory (CRT). CRT, which originated in the legal field, seeks to expose the relationship between power, race, and racism. As Delgado and Stefancic (2012) note in their introduction to CRT, the theory “questions the very foundations of the liberal order including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law” (3). For example, Richard A. Orozco (2012) focuses on how Horne was able to influence Arizona state legislators through his discourse. Orozco traces a direct line from Horne’s letter to the legislative floor and statehouse members using Horne’s phrasing to describe MAPS as both “un-American and iniquitous” (53). Orozco also focuses on “rationality” and its relationship to common sense interpretations of texts by examining Horne’s “literal and (assumed) rational translation of ‘raza,’ [he] not only misses its emotive interpretation as ‘the people,’ he repositions literal translations as sensible and reasonable” (Orozco 2011, 827). As will be discussed below, this “common sense” interpretation of text is ubiquitous among those who challenge books in libraries and schools. Orozco’s work demonstrates how these interpretive strategies can also be linked to issues of race and power.

Although there are many practical resources on academic freedom and school textbooks, there has been relatively little scholarly research. Perhaps the most well-known is Diane Ravitch’s The Language Police (2003), which focused on bias review committees employed by textbook publishers. Ravitch argues that such review committees are engaging in censorship when they change certain words in texts. Note however that Ravitch’s work focuses on a priori challenges to classroom material while the focus of this article is on the removal of certain books from schools after adoption.

Another example of research regarding textbook challenges is Robert H. Burger’s (1978) study of the Kanawha County textbook controversy of 1974. Burger found that the opposing sides used communication styles to describe their viewpoints. Joan DelFattore’s 1992 book What Johnny Shouldn’t Read explores the history of two textbook-censorship cases in the United States. She finds, for example, that the challengers were suspicious of children’s imagination and saw their actions as an act of protection. A few studies focus on the relationship between school book censorship and the law. For example, Eugene Bjorklun (1990) discusses 1998 the Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlemier Supreme Court decision, which gave school boards broad discretion in removing books from the curriculum. He notes that the decision led to an increase in school book challenges in the following years. There are also manuals and edited volumes (Brown and National Council of Teachers of English 1994; Reichman 2001) that discuss school challenges in general, and these often include some information on challenges in the classroom as well as the school library. The current article is intended to expand our understanding of school-curriculum challenges and explore a framework for analysis based in the study of reading practices.

Two concepts will be employed in the discourse analysis below: indoctrination and the common sense interpretation of texts. Indoctrination has long been part of pedagogical discourse. There is not room to explore the entire history of the debate, but it should be noted that in the late nineteenth century, education and indoctrination were synonyms. As Gordon (1984, 531) notes, the difference between education and indoctrination seems to be rooted in the concepts of transmission (in which students are passive receivers of values) and presentation (in which students are active agents in pedagogy). In her article on indoctrination, Mary Anne Raywid (1980) states that the pejorative sense of the term could not be found in a dictionary until the 1930s. James A. Lang (2007) notes that educational philosophy no longer asks “is indoctrination wrong?” but “what is it about indoctrination that is wrong?” Following the work of I. A. Snook (1970) and others, there are four main components of indoctrination: intent, content, method, and outcome. In order of importance for this study, intent refers to the need of the educator to reduce criticism and limit student challenges in the classroom. Method refers to the educator suppressing other sides of the argument. Outcome refers to the idea that the student will hold their beliefs uncritically.ⁱ Finally, content seems to be more a matter of perception but, according to Lang (2007), it often refers to information that does not support a broadly liberal, secular position. As will be demonstrated below, all of these criteria are cited as reasons for dismantling the MAS program in Tucson. However, it is not surprising that, when referring to the textbooks that were used, content was of primary importance to the program’s opponents.

The concept of common sense interpretation is rooted in print-culture studies and the study of reading practices. This interpretive strategy’s (Fish 1982) foundations can be traced to eighteenth-century Scottish Common Sense Realism philosophical theory and a particular relationship to texts. Although this type of interpretation is linked to literalism, it is more accurately termed “common sense” because the challengers who employ such interpretive strategies not only argue for the literal interpretation of texts but also that such an interpretation should be self-evident to others. For eighteenth-century common sense philosophers such as John Witherspoon, the ability to observe and understand the world along with the self-sufficiency of the individual were of primary importance (Segrest 2010). Interpretation of texts, for those who followed this tradition, should be based on scientific rationality instead of on the symbolic or analogic. Marsden (1991) notes that these philosophers and their followers subscribed to the theory that “things are thought best described exactly the way they appear, accurately with no hidden meanings” (157). That is, texts do not contain many different meanings and there is only one interpretation possible when one encounters the text. In some respects, those who hold to this style of interpretation reject reader-response theory as a viable method for interacting with texts.

Schrader (1997) links this dismissal to what he calls “word fear,” noting that it is a type of interpretation of people who

reject any distinction between narrative and indoctrination, between portrayal and instruction and promotion, between description and “how-to,” between disclosure and endorsement and advocacy, between statement and encouragement and glorification, between exposure and seduction, between telling and teaching, between storytelling and condoning, between discussion and recruitment, between knowledge and action. (10)

As I have previously (Knox 2014, 2015) demonstrated, this common sense interpretation of texts unites book challengers of different ideologies and worldviews. This type of interpretation can also be called “monosemic,” wherein it is believed that texts possess a stable referent and can only have one meaning. It is challengers’ belief in monosemy and the impossibility of polysemy that drives them to ask for books to be removed, restricted, or relocated in public institutions. Challengers actively reject reader-response theory (Tompkins 1980), transactional theory (Rosenblatt 1995), and the idea that texts contain multiple meanings. That is, for the challengers it only takes “common sense” to determine the meaning of texts.

Here one can see the link between monosemic interpretation and indoctrination. As noted above, the concept of indoctrination relies on constructing students as passive agents in the classroom. This would indicate that they bring nothing to the texts that they read and therefore would not be capable of applying various interpretive strategies to texts. Instead, a particular text’s meaning is always clear to anyone, including a student, who encounters it. Therefore, if the text states a controversial idea, there is only one outcome that can come from reading it—indoctrination into a particular point of view.

To understand what happened in Tucson and to provide context for arguments used in the analysis, the following section presents an overview of the development and dismantling of the TUSD MAS program. It is based on news accounts from several sources, including the Arizona Daily Star, Associated Press, Tucson Weekly, and supplementary material from the school district (a complete bibliography is on the author’s website). As there are several legal cases involved in the development and dismantling of the program that provide sources for discourse used in the analysis, these are indicated throughout the timeline for clarity.

Terminating the TUSD Mexican American Studies Program

As Jeff Biggers (2012a) notes in State Out of the Union, Arizona has long been a place of cultural conflict. Even thoug the TUSD MAS controversy erupted during what Biggers calls the “summer of the brown scare,” its history dates back more than thirty years. In 1974, several Latinx parents with children in the TUSD system brought a lawsuit against the district arguing that the schools were segregated. This case, together with a previous one brought on behalf of African American students (the two cases were combined into Fisher, Mendoza v. TUSD), reached a settlement in 1978 and the district was placed under a desegregation order. One response to the order was the establishment of a Black Studies program (later changed to African American Studies), which would be added to the Native American Studies program began in 1976 in response to the 1972 Indian Education Act. In 1996 several students and community members requested that a new Mexican American program be implemented to decrease the Latinx dropout rate. After an initial lawsuit filed in 1997, the program formally launched in January of 1999 and classes started that fall.

After eight years of courses, in October 2007, the state superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne (and the Arizona attorney general from 2011 to 2015), sent a Freedom of Information Act request to TUSD to find out more about the MAS program. He also wrote an “Open Letter to the People of Tucson,” which will be analyzed below, stating that the program should be terminated noting that they teach a “destructive ethnic chauvinism” (Horne, 2007, 2). The inspection ended in December, but this was the first indication that MAS had become a political target.

In 2008 and 2009 state senate committees passed bills ostensibly intended to block the teaching of ethnic studies classes across the state but which were specifically aimed at the TUSD MAS program. These bills implied that the MAS program had an agenda that conflicted with so-called American values. Neither bill made it to the floor of the state legislature. In November 2009, Horne released a study conducted by the Deputy Associate Superintendent Robert Franciosi, which found that MAS students did not do better on state standardized tests. Then in December of that year a federal judge lifted the desegregation order in its entirety, declaring the district unified.

2010 was a watershed year for conflict in Arizona. First, in January, a group of Latinx plaintiffs (Fisher, Mendoza v. TUSD) appealed the end of the desegregation order and court oversight of the school district. In February, the full Arizona state legislature passed SB 1070, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, also known in some quarters as the “Papers Please” law. SB 1070 allowed law enforcement officers to ask anyone for documentation proving their status as citizens or lawful aliens on the basis of “reasonable suspicion.” Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill on April 23.

On April 28, the ethnic studies bill, HB 2281, was approved by the senate. The bill precluded school districts or charter schools from including in their program of instruction any course or class that does the following:

1. Promotes the overthrow of the Federal or state government or the Constitution
2. Promotes resentment toward any race or class (e.g., racism and classism)
3. Advocates ethnic solidarity instead of being individuals
4. Are designed for a certain ethnicity

However, the billow allowed the following:

1. Native American classes, in order to comply with federal law
2. Groupings of classes that are based on academic performance of students
3. Classes about the history of an ethnic group that are open to all students
4. Classes that discuss controversial history

The term “controversial” was not defined. As with the previous bills on ethnic studies, this bill specifically targeted TUSD’s MAS program and on May 10, Governor Brewer signed the bill into law. TUSD continued to maintain that the bill did not apply to the MAS program. In response there were protests against both SB 1070 and HB 2281, and in October MAS teachers filed a lawsuit (Acosta et al. v. Horne et al.) against Horne and the State Board of Education.

In January of 2011, in a Daily Star interview, Horne, then state attorney general, noted that “the only way the district can come into compliance will be complete elimination of the Mexican American Studies program” (Huicochea 2011). The new state superintendent of public instruction, John Huppenthal, gave a statement noting that he planned to review the program and that he was “concerned” about TUSD. On June 15, Huppenthal announced the long-delayed outcome of his audit, which found that the program was not in violation of the state law. However, despite the findings, Huppenthal announced that the MAS program was in violation of the law and that TUSD had sixty days to come into compliance or the district would lose $15 million in revenue from the state. On December 21, there was a federal court hearing regarding the program and the injunction against HB 2281 (Acosta v. Horne, now v. Huppenthal et al.). In a different case (Administrative Hearing of an Appeal by: Tucson Unified School District, No. 11F-002-ADE) the following week, the administrative judge issued a finding that held that the program was in violation of the law.

According to news accounts, TUSD had until the end of July to end the MAS program. If the program did not end, the first reduction in state funds of $4.9 million would come in February. On January 10, 2012, the board voted to end the program. However, even though the classes were eliminated, the MAS department still existed—a tactic employed to remain in compliance with the desegregation order. On January 11, administrators walked into the MAS classes, boxed the books used in the curriculum, and transported them to a warehouse. The courses and curriculum were now American history and English literature.

In 2013, the board decided that it would offer core credit (instead of elective credit) for culturally relevant courses, which had been ordered by the judge in charge of the desegregation case. In March, the state law that banned the MAS program was upheld by federal court and the case was appealed. Huppenthal, who had been voted out of office after confessing to being the author of disparaging blog posts, issued a final order on his last day stating that TUSD’s new multicultural classes violated Arizona law. In March 2015, the new state superintendent, Diane Douglas, found TUSD to be in compliance with the law but also stated that the district would still be monitored by the state Board of Education. In July of 2015, an appeals court (in the case of Acosta v. Huppenthal, now Arce v. Douglas) found that the ban on ethnic studies in public schools was constitutional but also sent the discrimination claim against the District to the lower court. The judge found that the state’s law was racially motivated and ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

The Banned Books

Although the focus of this article is on interpretation and indoctrination, not the content of the textbooks, it is important to discuss the titles that were actually removed as well as the controversy over The Tempest to clarify widespread misunderstanding concerning the case as to provide context for the analysis below. When the news media first covered the case, there was some confusion regarding which titles could no longer be used in the school curriculum. The Tempest, which was taught as part of a course on English/Latinx literature according to the audit of the MAS program conducted by a consulting company (Cambium Learning, Inc. 2011, 118), was not banned by the district. However, an instructor who used the text in one of his MAS classes, Curtis Acosta, discussed why state officials might have trouble with his interpretation of the text in an interview with Jeff Biggers for the Huffington Post:

What is very clear is that The Tempest is problematic for our administrators due to the content of the play and the pedagogical choices I have made. In other words, Shakespeare wrote a play that is clearly about colonization of “the new world” and there are strong themes of race, colonization, oppression, class and power that permeate the play, along with themes of love and redemption. We study this work by Shakespeare using the work of renowned historian Ronald Takaki and the chapter “The Tempest in the Wilderness” from his book A Different Mirror where he uses the play to explore the early English settlements on this continent and English imperialism. From there, we immerse ourselves in the play and discuss the beauty of the language, Shakespeare’s multiple perspectives on colonization, and the brilliant and courageous attention he gives to such important issues (Biggers, 2012c).

Contrary to news reports, The Tempest is still on the approved books list. A press release from TUSD noted that the news reports were erroneous (Tucson Unified School District 2012). However, one might surmise that the district sanctions only certain interpretations.

According to the same press release, seven books were removed by TUSD after the vote on January 10, 2012:

• Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuna
• Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years by Bill Bigelow
• Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
• Message to AZTLAN by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales
• 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures edited by Elizabeth Martinez
• Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales

The press release noted that these books were found to be “out of compliance” with the state law that targeted the MAS program. It should be noted that the books were approved as supplementary curriculum materials in October 2013. As will be shown in the analysis below, these books were considered to be instrumental in what the opponents called the “indoctrination” of the MAS students.

In this article, I hope to show that a particular interpretation of these books is crucial to understanding the opposition to the MAS program. As I have previously argued (Knox 2014), calls for the restriction, removal, and relocation of books are often a matter of interpretation of texts. Critics who argued for both the dismantling of the MAS program and the removal of the textbooks often employ what I call “common sense” interpretive strategy with regard to texts wherein texts “mean what they say and say what they mean”; this is an interpretive strategy that is strongly associated with the concept of indoctrination. As noted above, censorship is an act that combines power and knowledge. In this case, the question interpretation of the knowledge found in texts indicates what is appropriate for public school curricula.

Methodology: Language and the Discourse of Censorship

In previous work (Knox 2015), I have explored book censorship as a type of reading practice. My analytical foundations are grounded in the social constructionist theory of Berger and Luckmann (1966) and Schutz and Luckmann (1973). Berger, Schutz, and Luckman focus on how knowledge is constructed, transmitted, and maintained in society. They especially focus on stocks of knowledge that humans use as frames to understand our interactions in the everyday world. These stocks of knowledge are made of typical actions and types. Typical actions provide maps for “getting thing done” in the world. Types are abstract, incomplete, relative, and relevant constructions of objects. In my work I focus on the typical action of interpreting text and “the book” as a type of object. This article explores common themes of interpretation that were employed in the discourse of MAS-program opponents regarding the textbooks used in the program.

Throughout my work I focus on what I call the discourse of censorship to better understand both why and how people construct arguments against reading particular materials. These are arguments that go against the overall ethos of “freedom” that permeates our society. By focusing on opponents’ arguments, we can see how access to information is impeded through the use of language and symbolic power. If we wish to keep ethnic studies programs like Tucson’s MAS, it is imperative that we understand the arguments made by those who wish to dismantle them.

I used several sources for the MAS opponents’ arguments discussed below. The main source of discourse consists of various court filings, reports, audits, as well as the open letter from a government official discussed in the timeline above. I also sent an open-records request to TUSD in July 2012 and received a few documents, including emails, that discuss the case directly from the district in response. Transcripts from school district meetings regarding the program were also included in the corpus. Finally, a blog post from an opponent of the MAS program provided a vibrant source for discourse against the program. Following approval by my university’s institutional review board, I also sent interview requests to both Huppenthal and Horne, but was denied.

I employ the methods of discourse analysis that focus on how challengers’ arguments communicate “the constitution and construction of the world in the concrete use of signs and the underlying structural patterns or rules for the production of meaning” (Keller 2013, 2). All the arguments against the MAS program in the complete set of documents from the sources above were analyzed for common themes using Atlas.ti software for qualitative research. The analysis is an example of culturalist discourse analysis (Keller 2005) that focuses on how people combine symbolic power and language to effect change. In particular, I look for how people name themselves (e.g., as taxpayers, parents) and thereby invoke their own symbolic power (Bourdieu 1991) and also how they discuss the negative effects of reading to justify their position against the MAS program. Coding was an iterative process, and both previous research and the discourse itself provided codes for analysis. Codes were applied at the paragraph level to ensure sufficient context. Paragraphs sometimes received more than one code.

Common Sense Interpretation and Indoctrination

As noted above, according to philosophers of education, there are four conceptualizations of indoctrination: intent, content, method, and outcome. MAS program opponents discuss all four of these concepts throughout their discourse regarding the textbooks. Not surprisingly, content takes precedence for the opponents in their arguments. This section of the article explores the discourse of the opponents and seeks to demonstrate a connection between common sense interpretation and indoctrination, as this link is important for understanding school curricula challenges. As noted above, other analytical lenses, including critical race theory, could be used to understand why opponents attacked the both the program and textbooks. For example, the dismantling of the program could be seen only as a response to the growing power of the Lantinx community in Arizona. However, the following section demonstrates why MAS opponents targeted not just the program but also the books through the use of a particular interpretive strategy—one that allows for only one meaning in texts. Due to space constraints, only representative samples of the discourse are discussed here.

Common Sense Interpretation

Those who employ common sense interpretation hold that texts “mean what they say and say what they mean” and that this meaning is self-evident (that is, common sense) to all readers. They also contend that when individuals—particularly children and youth—are confronted with a text, they can understand the words on a page in only one particular way. This interpretive strategy can be found throughout the MAS opponents’ discourse. For example, a court document from the Acosta v. Huppenthal case discusses the textbooks as follows (underlining as in the original and quoted at length for clarity):

The materials for this class include “A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in School.” These materials include: “We often hear people referred to as being privileged, which usually is a comment pertaining to the individual’s financial or economic status. . . . In Courageous Conversation, however, privilege takes on a different meaning: it refers to the amount of melanin in a person’s skin, hair, and eyes. (This is followed by a table which promulgates racial stereotypes by detailing the differences between “white individualism” “colored group collectivism.”) “White people tend to dominate the conversation by setting the tone for how everyone must talk and which words should be used. All of these “White ways” must be recognized, internalized, and then silently acted on by people of color”. (This is an example, referring to the statute, of subsection 2, “promote resentment toward a race or class of people”) . . . The aforementioned White cultural characteristics, such as individualism, blur into the consciousness of Whiteness, which becomes not only a way of behaving but also a way of thinking. . . .

At page 200 of these materials, there is a table setting forth in detail the difference between “White Talk” and “Color Commentary”. These materials go on to state: “Anger, guilt, and shame are just a few of the emotions experienced by participants as they move toward greater understanding of Whiteness”. [If one were to substitute any other race for “Whiteness”, it would be obvious how this promotes resentment toward a race or a people.] (Response to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment 2012, 3–4)

Note that the references to “promulgating racist stereotypes” and “promoting resentment toward a race or class of people” are direct responses to the Arizona law to end MAS. What is of interest here is that the authors of the document assert that their interpretation of the book is the only possible one that a reader could make. The quotations from the book are presented without context. Hence the reader of the document does not have any sense of what the author of the book is trying to convey or even if these are the author’s own judgments. This tactic is indicative of a common sense interpretive stance wherein the author views the meaning of the quotations from the textbook as self-evident to any reader.

Similarly, in his “Open Letter to the Citizens of Tucson” (2007) mentioned in the timeline above, Tom Horne, then the state superintendent of public instruction, also discusses the textbooks that were used in the curriculum using a common sense interpretation. He describes the texts as engaging in a “kind of destructive ethnic chauvinism.” The following discusses both on author’s interpretation of a speech and Horne’s own interpretation of the same:

One of Gutiérrez’s speeches is described as follows:

We are fed up. We are going to move to do away with the injustices to the Chicano and if the ‘gringo’ doesn’t get out of our way, we will stampede over him.” Gutiérrez attacked the gringo establishment angrily at a press conference and called upon Chicanos to ‘kill the gringo,’ which meant to end white control over Mexicans.

The textbook’s translation of what Gutiérrez meant contradicts his clear language. In describing the atmosphere in Texas where Gutiérrez spoke, the textbook states: “Texans had never come to grips with the fact that Mexicans had won at the Alamo.” (P. 323.) It is certainly strange to find a textbook in an American public school taking the Mexican side of the battle at the Alamo.

Horne’s statement offers a clear example of common sense interpretation. For him, Gutierrez’s speech can only be understood in one way, and “Kill the gringo” means that one should kill white Americans. The idea that the authors of the text would interpret this using a different lens or that the speech has a particular historical context simply does not seem to be viable interpretation of the text and, in light of his own common sense strategy, the perceived point of view of the text is adequate justification for banning the book.

A common sense interpretive framework was also employed in the testimony of opponents to MAS during various open meetings and hearings that were held regarding the status of the program. The following quote is from a community member:

I would like to address this board on the La Raza Studies that makes it quite clear that Chicanos want to have wars, civil war. You don’t really want that. Because true war, men who have been in war can tell you that right offhand, men, women, and children. War is about life and death, and there’s not going to be no time outs and no little white flags. And the La Raza Studies calls for civil war, they want to fight the white man, they want to kill every gringo over the age of 16. I’ve read it in the book. (Anonymous 2011)

The testimony here offers a strong statement of monosemic interpretation. Since the MAS opponent has “read the book,” he therefore understands the purpose of the program, which was (he presumes) to teach children to kill white people. As will be demonstrated below, this is precisely how the MAS opponents understand the practice of indoctrination. They argue that students do not have agency in their own education and when are presented with certain ideas and they accept ideas without question.

Indoctrination

The opponents of the MAS program did not always use the term “indoctrinate,” but it is strongly implied in many of their arguments. In particular, some of their discourse focuses on the four main concepts of indoctrination: intent, content, methods, and outcome. For example, throughout the Response to the Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment (Document 151) from Acosta v. Huppenthal, the idea that the MAS program has a certain inention and leads toward certain outcomes is prevalent (underlining and “Emphasis added” in the original):

Like the Findings of the Hearing officer, [Exhibit A] presents overwhelming evidence that TUSD adopted a course of study that promotes racism:

The Findings Pulled directly from the materials used in the ethnic studies class:

The students are taught “Critical Race Theory”. A part of the “Critical Race Theory” is defined by the materials taught to the students as follows: “Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundation of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” (Emphasis added). (Response to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment 2012, 3)

Note that this quotation (which I also used in the literature revew above) from “the materials used in the . . . class” is presented without comment in the Response. It is clear that, for the defendant, teaching CRT means—by definition—that the teachers in the program intended for students to question the “liberal order” and “Enlightenment rationalism.” Since there is no commentary as to why this type of questioning might be problematic, this seems to be an idea that the defendant believes would be abhorrent to any reader. Likewise, in an affidavit from one of the former teachers in the program (who eventually opposed it), John Ward the affiant implies the students were “indoctrinated” rather than “educated:”

3. The teachers and administrators in the MAS Program did not encourage or cultivate robust discussion by presenting a variety of balanced views on controversial issues covered in classes. Instead, they advocated views and ideas that were consistent with their ideology, while demeaning opposing viewpoints.

4. MAS staff promoted racial and ethnic solidarity among students and fostered an “us versus them” mentality. Accepting the MAS staff’s views was a litmus test for students to demonstrate that they were “Raza”—in other words a proud member of their ethnic group. (Ward 2012, 2)

According to this affidavit, the MAS curriculum fulfills all four conceptualizations of indoctrination. Ward argues that the other MAS teachers’ intent was to persuade students that there was a cultural war against Latinx. The method was what the testifier calls “ethnic solidarity.” Content is not discussed explicitly but it is implied that it was anti-capitalist. Finally, the outcome that the MAS staff demanded was that the students show that they were “proud member[s] of their ethnic group.”

Community members also provided arguments against the program. For example, a Tucson attorney, John Munger, was an outspoken opponent of the MAS program and discussed it on both his blog, Imagine Arizona, and during his testimony at board meetings. In 2010 he read and analyzed the textbooks used inthe MAS program. Much of his analysis, excerpted below, is concerned with the issue of indoctrination. In the following he notes that that the books are focused on Marxism:

The books are not about history. The books are not about ethnicity. The books teach two major themes. The two themes they teach is first the books are classical showpieces of Marxist re-indoctrination. They are about political oppression, incessant deprecation of anything not Chicano, including the US Constitution, capitalism, and anything European or of European culture. That’s what the books said. (Munger 2011b)

Of interest here is the use of the term “re-indoctrination.” It is possible that Munger means that, as “immigrants” (although many of the students were born in the United States), these students left countries that were Marxist and the books are reintroducing them to political ideas that they left behind. According to Munger’s testimony, the books were not fulfilling an educational need to introduce TUSD students to non-Chicano culture.

Munger also writes the following on his blog regarding the critical perspective of the books, stating that they eschew a grand national narrative of American history:

Having read the books the students must read, as well as the Principles and philosophies of MecHa [sic] [Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o de Aztlan], I found many interesting quotes and facts. First, there is NO book presenting American History generally, nor even the standard view of Southwestern American History—ALL the books speak solely from the point of view of the oppressed “Chicano,” with no effort to teach alternative thought or facts. Second, the concepts and language in the materials is, frankly, classic Marxist indoctrination based on oppression and inculcation of hatred of anyone European or who might identify themselves as an American. (Munger 2011b)

Here Munger reiterates the point made in his testimony above that the books take a “nonstandard” view of American history. Books that discuss oppression or that are critical of dominant culture are automatically described as indoctrination. The discussion in his blog continues:

These are just some of the facts pertaining to TUSD’s Ethnic Studies Program and MecHa [sic]. There is much, much more. These facts are based on reading the materials given our students to read. The results of this indoctrination are astounding. I have a photograph of one student of this program carrying a sign and protesting recently. The sign held by this student shouts in bold letters: “Dumb F*** Gringos. You Are Standing in Mexico Right Now!” (Ibid.)

Munger discusses the effects of indoctrination as the polar opposite of education. Education is about learning and growth while indoctrination focuses on ideology and being exposed to one (wrong) idea. It is clear from Munger’s example that the anti-MAS community members are using the term “indoctrination” to imply that there is something inherently wrong with the MAS program.

The question of the outcomes and effects of the program is also found in court documents, for example, in the Response to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment (2012) when referring to the affidavits of former teachers in the program:

The Motion for Summary Judgment argues about “chilling affects” on the exercise of 1st amendment [sic] rights. But the testimony from teachers and former teachers show that it is this program itself which is chilling 1st amendment [sic] rights:

In the past several weeks, messages have filtered out from teachers and other TUSD employees . . . about what an officially recognized resentment-based program does to a high school.

In a word, it creates fear.

Teachers and counselors are being called before their school principals and even the district school board and accused of being racists. And with a cadre of self-acknowledge [sic] “progressive” political activists in the ethnic-studies department on the hunt, the race transgressors are multiplying.(5).

According to opponents, the MAS program was not teaching students and expanding students’ minds but attempting to inculcate them with certain values and a way of thinking about society. In this case, indoctrination means that the students will inevitably become people who feel that there is something wrong with the United States. The program itself is instilling fear into other teachers. This is, of course, premised on the idea that students cannot think for themselves nor engage in rational discernment regarding the ideas they are taught in class. Here we see how indoctrination is strongly related to the acceptance of common sense interpretation. Accordingly, there is only one possible interpretation of the texts (and lectures) taught in the MAS program.

Indoctrination, Education, and Banning Books

Indoctrination describes a practice that is somewhat difficult to pin down. Originally linked to religion, indoctrination is connected to a process of forming minds that does not allow for deviation from or interrogation of the facts presented. When teachers are accused of indoctrination, they are perceived to engage in the following” to have a distinct intent in their purpose, to teach particular content, to use only certain methods, and to expect a particular outcome. Although the philosophy of education has described what indoctrination is, it has paid less attention to how this process might play out. This paper is intended to be a first step in linking the concept of indoctrination to a common sense understanding of interpretation of texts. It has demonstrated this connection through the discourse of those who fear indoctrination within an educational program.

All the concepts of indoctrination were used against MAS and its instructors throughout the case. Opponents argued that the intent of the program was for students to hate the United States and white people. The content of the textbooks in particular and the entire philosophy of the program in general did not adhere to a grand national narrative of progress. There was less focus on methods in the opponents’ discourse. However, they did state that the teachers did not allow for dissent from a critical orientation toward history and society. Finally, the opponents argued that the outcome of the program was anger and resentment toward the wider society. It is clear from both the opponents’ discourse regarding their content and the fact that they were banned that the textbooks used by the MAS instructors played a major role in understanding how the process of indoctrination takes place. It is a commitment to common sense or monosemic interpretation that helps explain both this process and the fear inherent in the discourse employed by the opponents to the MAS program.

This fear combined with a reliance on common sense interpretation is based in the understanding that students lack the agency to interpret lectures and texts using their own interpretive framework. There can be no doubt that the MAS program had a critical point of view regarding US history and society. However, presentation of critical ideas in the classroom does not mean that they will be accepted by all because students are not passive receptors in education. The fact that the MAS program opponents and supporters could read the same books and come to different conclusions demonstrates how readers engage in active responses to texts.

The program opponents argue that the inevitable outcome of the program was indoctrination because there was only one way to understand the messages that are given by the program. Their discourse focuses on common sense interpretation wherein the books that were boxed up “say what they mean and mean what they say.” This understanding of interpretation often leads directly to challenges of books in school curricula and also, as I have previously demonstrated elsewhere, in school and public libraries. However, what is lacking in both school and public library challenges is an aspect of coercion that is present in school curricula. It is this distinctiveness that makes the fear of indoctrination such an important aspect of curriculum challenges. Future research might focus on how students, teachers, and administrators understand this feature of challenges in schools.

In conclusion, it must be stated that there is a very fine line between education and indoctrination because all education has a specific intent of introducing students to new ideas and socializing them into a distinct culture. However, challenges to school curriculum materials in particular can only be understood through a combination of lack of agency on the part of the students, common sense interpretation, and a fear of indoctrination on the part of the challengers. It is imperative that educators are aware of these arguments so they can adequately prepare for school curriculum challenges as the discourse employed in such challenges will have features that make it distinctive from the discourse used in challenges to materials in other settings.

Acknowledgement

Thank you to Melissa Cornwell for her help with gathering sources and transcription.

Source References

Anonymous. 2011. Testimony. TUSD School Board Meeting. August 9.

Horne, T. 2007. “Open Letter to the Citizens of Tucson.” June 11. http://nau.edu/uploadedFiles/Academic/CAL/Philosophy/Forms/An%20Open%20Letter%20to%20Citizens%20of%20Tucson.pdf.

Munger. J. 2011a. Testimony. TUSD School Board Meeting. May 10.

———. 2011b. “TUSD Ethnic Studies: A Report of My Review of Textbooks and Program.” Imagine Arizona (blog). January 21. http://imaginearizona.com/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/14/TUSD-Ethnic-Studies-A-Report-of-My-Review-of-Textbooks-and-Program.aspx.

Response to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment. 2012. Acosta v. Huppenthal, Doc. 151.

Ward, J. 2012. Affidavit. Acosta v. Huppenthal, Doc. 194-B.

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