This can only be described as f%%king ridiculous... Last week, our friend Jay Chen, president of the Hacienda La Puente Unified School Board (and former Angry Reader of the Week), was served with a notice of intent to circulate a recall petition. Unfortunately, there are some dumbass people in this community.It boils down to this. Jay and three other members of the board are being targeted over their support of a middle school Mandarin language program funded by the Chinese government. Because of course, the dumbasses believe a Chinese-funded program can only mean devious Communist brainwashing: Calif Chinese program prompts school board recall.
Chen, along with board members Norman Hsu, Joseph Chang and Anita Perez, voted last year to approve the agreement with China's international language-teaching agency to cooperate on the so-called Confucius Classroom Mandarin program.Each of the recall petitions were signed by twelve residents of Hacienda Heights. On Friday, Jay posted a scan of the petition, below, on his Facebook page. As you can see, among other idiotic accusations, the petition claims Jay "believes that the United States will be subservient to China and manipulates students to serve China's government." Yes, people. The first step in the takeover.
Under the program, which already is in place at dozens of other schools across the United States, the district was to receive $30,000 a year for language and culture programs at Cedarlane Middle School, along with some 1,000 textbooks, CDs and other educational materials.
The program attracted scorn from some community members, who have said at board meetings it was a vehicle to indoctrinate students with communist ideology and other foreign influences.
The recall petition served to Chen claims he "believes that the United States will be subservient to China and manipulates students to serve China's government," among other claims.
Can I just say that this is utter bullshit? Straight up racist. They might as well be honest about it and add one more complaint: "6. Is Chinese American." Most of the opponents of Confucius Classroom apparently don't even have children in the school district. Have fun with your awesome xenophobia while the rest of the world leaves you behind in your drooling pool of ignorance.
If you support Jay Chen, sign the petition against the petition: Reject the Recall of Hacienda La Puente School Board and Support Foreign Language Acquisition. Like I said, ridiculous. If you're familiar with the situation, you know that this is just one big eye roll. For some more background, read this guest post Jay wrote last year: confucius say... don't hate.