UIS Speaker Series presents “The Banning of Mexican American Studies"

WHAT: The University of Illinois Springfield Engaged Citizenship Common Experience (ECCE) Speakers Series presents “The Banning of Mexican American Studies: Towards Cultural & Intellectual Apartheid in Arizona”. The Hispanic Heritage Month event will be led by Augustine Romero, a founder and former director of the Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) Mexican American/ Raza Studies Department.

WHEN: Monday, September 23, 2013 at 7:00 p.m.

WHERE: UIS Brookens Auditorium, located on the lower level of Brookens Library

DETAILS: Teachers in Tucson, Arizona's majority Mexican American K-12 school district developed a Mexican American Studies curriculum that emphasized critical thinking and helped students of Mexican ancestry see themselves in the curriculum. Despite evidence that it enhanced student engagement, graduation rates, and performance on state exams, the Arizona legislature passed a law that shut down the program in 2012. Romero will discuss the theory behind the program and its success. He will address the attacks and dismantling of the department, the current court-mandated resurrection of the model, and what the curriculum means to the students.

Romero is TUSD's director of multicultural curriculum and co-founder of the Social Justice Education Project. He has served on Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano's Latino Advisory Board and was Tucson's Hispanic Professional Action Committee’s Man of the Year (2011).

This event is co-sponsored by the UIS Organization of Latin American Students, Women and Gender Studies Department, and Sociology and Anthropology Department.

For a list of other upcoming ECCE Speakers Series events and more information, visit http://illinois.edu/goto/speakerseries. All events are free and open to the public.