Parents Sue California over Mandated ‘Chants to Aztec Gods’ in Ethnic Studies Classes

A group of parents in California sued the State Board of Education Friday over a proposed new “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum” (ESMC) that would have public school students chanting affirmations to Aztec gods and invoking an ancient Nigerian Yoruba religious prayer.

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The lawsuit includes the text of the “Nahui Ollin,” described as a chant “founded on traditional Aztec beliefs, focusing especially on the four deities Tezkatlipoka, Quetzalkoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and Xipe Totek” as well as a reference to Hunab Ku, “an older Mayan creator deity.”

Also included in the curriculum is another “affirmation” dedicated to the Yoruba “divine force” known as Ashe. After sentences such as “Who is going to have a positive day?” or “Who will represent their people, this day?”, students are told to say, “Ashe!’”

The Thomas More Society and special counsel Paul Jonna of LiMandri & Jonna LLP filed the complaint with the Superior Court of California in San Diego on behalf of Californians for Equal Rights and San Diego county residents Eric Gonzales, Steve Houbeck, and Jose Velazquez, each parents of school-age children. {snip}

“The curriculum’s unequivocal promotion of five Aztec gods or deities through repetitive chanting and affirmation of their symbolic principles constitutes an unlawful government preference toward a particular religious practice,” Frank Xu, Californians for Equal Rights Foundation president, said in a statement. “This public endorsement of the Aztec religion fundamentally erodes equal education rights and irresponsibly glorifies anthropomorphic, male deities whose religious rituals involved gruesome human sacrifice and human dismemberment,” he added.

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