California public school's 'ethnic studies' proposes chants to Aztec gods of human sacrifice and cannibalism
Public schools prohibit Christian prayers, but a new program proposed by California under the title of 'ethnic studies' will see a curriculum that calls for 'decolonization' of American society and establishing ethnic religious symbolism by introducing students to prayers to Aztec gods.
It is reported that the curriculum includes an “ethnic studies community chant,” in which students appeal to the Aztec gods — including the god of human sacrifice — for the power to become “warriors” for “social justice.”
This is being understood as a means of forcing students to chant to the Aztec gods of human sacrifice and cannibalism. The curriculum, if approved, will affect the state’s entire primary and secondary education system, which consists of 10,000 public schools serving a total of 6 million students. The curriculum obtained by media shares that the solution is to “name, speak to, resist, and transform the hegemonic Eurocentric neocolonial condition” for “transformational resistance.” This is the third version of the draft and many have claimed that this version is a lot better than the first version that was presented in 2019.
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It has been observed that the rewriters of the curriculum might have missed some key points in discussing the four major ethnic groups -- Black, Latino, Asian, Native American -- that constitute ethnic studies as they seem more determined to make the program more about empowering marginalized groups and building bridges to understanding worthy goals. For instance, the curriculum reportedly includes an extensive understanding of the effort to save an Ohlone burial site in the East Bay, however, there isn't much about the treatment of California’s Mission Indians, or the horrific human rights abuses heaped on Native Americans nationwide.
Students will reportedly seek “a revolutionary spirit” through the incantations that they are expected to chant. The program will be voted on next week. Theoretically speaking, the curriculum is based on the “pedagogy of the oppressed,” which was developed by Marxist theoretician Paolo Freire. He argued that students must be made aware of and educated about their oppression to attain “critical consciousness”, which he believed would lead to develop the capacity to overthrow their oppressors.
The model curriculum instructs teachers to help students “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, imperialist/colonial beliefs” and critique “white supremacy, racism and other forms of power and oppression.” This is expected to help inspire students to take part in “social movements that struggle for social justice” and “build new possibilities for a post-racist, post-systemic racism society.”
The religious concept is further fleshed out in the official “ethnic studies community chant.” The curriculum further recommends teachers lead their students in a series of indigenous songs, chants, and affirmations, including the 'In Lak Ech Affirmation'. This appeals directly to the Aztec gods. According to curriculum, students would first clap and chant to the god Tezkatlipoka — whom the Aztecs traditionally worshipped with human sacrifice and cannibalism.
Then, the students would chant to the gods Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and Xipe Totek, seeking “healing epistemologies” and “a revolutionary spirit.”
Huitzilopochtli reportedly inspired hundreds of thousands of human sacrifices during Aztec rule and is the Aztec diety of war. The chant would then come to an end with a request for “liberation, transformation, [and] decolonization." The students would then shout “Panche beh! Panche beh!” in pursuit of ultimate “critical consciousness.”
The curriculum is developed by R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, the original co-chair of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, who developed much of the material regarding early American history. His book titled 'Rethinking Ethnic Studies' is cited throughout the curriculum suggestion. The counter-argument to this curriculum states that public schools are prohibited from leading state-sanctioned Christian prayers. This would also lead to the presumption that the new curriculum would almost certainly be a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause as it speaks of direct appeals to Aztec gods.
