As COVID-19 counts fall, we should be testing even more
As demand lessens among ill folks, let’s boost checks of asymptomatic people
Finally, some positive news for Arizona.
The daily rate of new coronavirus cases is falling. The pressure on hospitals is beginning to ease. The percentage of positive tests is beginning to moderate slightly. And our reproduction rate is now one of the country’s lowest.
So, what do we do with this newfound good fortune?
Don’t let up.
A lot of folks have said that now is not the time for a victory lap. We still need to remain vigilant about wearing masks in public and staying at least six feet from those we don’t live with – lest COVID-19 cases begin to spike again, and we land right back where we don’t want to be. The same could be said for testing. As the immediate demand falls from sick folks, it might be tempting to take
But the new social movement sweeping the nation over racial equality, diversity and social justice will take hold in Arizona. And this time, Republicans won’t be able to crush the wave coming at them.
It’d be wise to start embracing change and reverting the bad policies, laws and decisions they or their predecessors made.
Since it’s too late to ask voters this November to repeal the law that ended bilingual education, I have another idea that can be done sooner than the next election cycle.
Make Chicano or ethnic studies a college and high school graduation requirement. The program that former GOP schools’ chief and attorney general Tom Horne fought so hard to kill is important to Latinos, who make up a third of Arizona’s population.
Lawmakers prohibited Arizona schools from offering classes that promoted the overthrow of the U.S. government and resentment for a certain race or class of people. A federal judge struck down the law in 2017 after a seven-year legal battle.
Teaching ethnic studies is about history, really. Mexico in 1848 lost a swath of its territory, including Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, California and parts of Utah to the U.S. But it can be a lot more, including other minority and social justice issues.
This month, the California state university system approved an ethnic and social justice studies graduation requirement. Arizona’s three public universities should do the same. Tucson and other high school districts across Arizona also should make it a requirement.
How can it be done? The Arizona Board of Regents that oversees the three public universities can and should make it a requirement.
The University of Arizona has a Mexican American Studies program. Arizona State University offers a Chicana and Chicano Studies major, and Northern Arizona University has an Ethnic Studies
In 2011 at the Arizona Capitol, people protest the banning of a Mexican American Studies program in Tucson.
ROSS D. FRANKLIN/AP
program.
But that’s different than making every student who wants a degree from those universities to take some required ethnic studies courses.
The regents, who by the way are all white except for the two student regents, approved some general curriculum requirements in June 2019 that include “a clear and direct education around questions related to ethics, civility, diversity, and inclusion.”
The regents, who are appointed to an eight-year tenure by the governor, reasoned that “persistence, resiliency and adaptability are not acquired through a single course.”
That takes us back to square one because the regents didn’t give the universities a deadline to implement the curriculum. The required courses must be specific to Chicano or ethnic studies.
High schools, too, should make it a requirement. Nothing is legally stopping them from doing so. In 2017, a federal judge permanently blocked the 2010 law that banned them from teaching such courses.
Oh, I know. Republicans still think teaching ethnic studies is political indoctrination aimed to “promote the overthrow of the United States government” and “promote resentment,” as they said in the state law that killed Mexican American studies at four Tucson high schools.
That kind of rhetoric won’t fly anymore. The Tucson program that Horne ended – first with the law and later by threatening to withhold millions of dollars – offered classes in everything from the history of the Chicano movement to Chicano literature.
Among the authors the district banned during the legal fight over the program was Rudolfo Anaya, considered the “godfather” of Chicano literature and who died in June at 82.
Anaya’s “Bless Me Última,” the acclaimed 1972 coming-of-age novel set in post World War ll, was listed with the dozen other books the Tucson district censored.
In 2016, president Barack Obama bestowed on the New Mexico native the National Humanities Medal for “pioneering stories of the American Southwest.”
Anaya’s novels and poetry should be celebrated and required reading in high school and college, not banned.
The other books censored and that should also be among required reading include “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros and “The Devil’s Highway” by Luis Alberto Urrea.
These are important literary works that address to some degree the Mexican, Hispanic and Chicano experience in this country. Not teaching them isn’t just an insult. It’s depriving new generations of Americans of an important aspect of the history of the southwestern United States.
Yes, students must know that most of Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada and Utah were once part of Mexico.
They must learn the struggles and predicament of the people who’ve made this region home, appreciate their culture and traditions and perhaps even draw inspiration from those Chicano literary pioneers like Rudolfo Anaya. positivity rates. It could help us get back to in-person school quicker, and to reopen gyms and bars with more confidence.
There seems to be a lot of interest in doing this. Arizona State University says it receives more requests for its salivabased tests from employers and organizations than it has capacity to handle.
That’s where the state should step in. Don’t just tell folks that if you want a test, go get one. Take the tests to nursing homes and schools and restaurants. Pool samples, where appropriate, if that helps get more asymptomatic folks tested.
And don’t let up on it.
As cases decline, we need fast, comprehensive testing more than ever.