Visting Presentation: Precious Knowledge

April 21st- CSUSM

Artist: Dos Vatos Film

Presenter: Pricila Rodriguez

Precious Knowledge

The video that was presented was shocking and alarming. I thought walking in to class that day was similar due to the fact there was an overwhelming amount of students from other classes in the auditorium. There was a brief introduction and then Pricila Rodriguez unveiled her high school years in a dramatic and heart-wrenching documentary called Precious Knowledge.

            Precious Knowledge was about a high school in the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona. There was a program established to teach students an exciting and relevant history. The program was called Ethnic Studies. This program helped many struggling Mexican American students about their heritage and culture. Students that were in this class began showing up to school and actually for the first time enjoyed learning. The students in this class were not only learning but they were advocating love. This advocacy of love stemmed from them wanting to make the world a better place starting with themselves their families and communities. But because of political reasoning and the Arizona boarders so close to Mexico many started to hear about these students learning about their heritage and thought it was un-American. Superintendent, Tom Horne did everything in his power to shut down this program. The students fought back in a silent non-violent way and they still had no voice. Tom Horne shut the program down and had many followers that were against this school, students and their learning. 

           This video presented in my foreign films class was not foreign, but it showed something that was going on in our world. The fact that as artist we should be politically active in our community is something that is wonderful. It is wonderful because as artist you can impact people and want to make a change. I feel that we all have passions and this film showed that passions exist even to the extent of education. Which is something that we have talked about all semester long.