Marcos Aguilar: Visionary Principal Or Whack-Job Radical?

Read this piece over at Wizbang! about the principal of The Academia Semillas del Pueblo Charter School in Los Angeles. Judge for yourself.

But be warned, Aguilar makes some pretty strong statements:

Marcos Aguilar, the school's founder and principal, said in an interview with an online educational journal, Teaching to Change L.A., he doesn't think much of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated American schools.

Aguilar simply doesn't want to integrate with white institutions.

"We don't want to drink from a white water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts," he said.

The issue of civil rights, Aguilar continued, "is all within the box of white culture and white supremacy. We should not still be fighting for what they have. We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger."

Ultimately, he said, the "white way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction. And so it isn't about an argument of joining neo liberalism, it's about us being able, as human beings, to surpass the barrier."

Aguilar said his school is not a response to problems in the public school system, as it's available only to about 150 families.

"We consider this a resistance, a starting point, like a fire in a continuous struggle for our cultural life, for our community and we hope it can influence future struggle," he said. "We hope that it can organize present struggle and that as we organize ourselves and our educational and cultural autonomy, we have the time to establish a foundation with which to continue working and impact the larger system."

On its website, the school describes itself as being "dedicated to providing urban children of immigrant native families an excellent education founded upon their own language, cultural values and global realities."

Read an interview with Aguilar here. MSM coverage of the alleged assault of reporter Sandy Wells at the school's campus here and there.

Visionary or Whackjob? You make the call.
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