Eagle Academy promotes Fidel Castro’s ally Che Guevara as hero to students in curriculum

  • New York City Public Schools - New York

Incidents

Issues

The Eagle Academy is a collection of six public charter schools designed to teach young black and Hispanic students and help push them to have successful careers. The school’s Bronx website explains that students “are engaged in a year-long healthy competition known as the House Competition” and “earn points for their houses for performing community service, being exemplary models for their peers, and excelling in their academics.” The school’s faculty members are also “divided into house advisors for each of the four houses.”

The names of the four houses in the Bronx school are “Malcom X House,” “Che Guevara House,” “Barack Obama House,” and “Roberto Clemente House.” Che Guevara specifically is known for helping Fidel Castro’s communist regime take over Cuba and personally murdering many Cubans.

The Eagle Academy’s Bronx school names “houses” after Malcom X and Che Guevara.

The Eagle Academy’s Queens website promotes six houses with “each named after a prominent male that consistently exhibited the Five Eagle Core Values [Confidence, Leadership, Academic Excellence, and Resilience].” Three of these houses are named after Che Guevara, Colin Kaepernick, and Barack Obama. The school then provides what appears to be a glowing review of Che Guevara’s life, including turning to “Marxism” and working to “overturn the capitalist exploration of Latin America.” The school provided the following description of Guevara:

Upset at the conditions of the poor and working class, he turned to Marxism. His desire to help overturn the capitalist exploration of Latin America kept him at odds with the United States government. In 1955, he met Fidel and Raul Castro of Cuba and helped them overthrow a U.S. backed dictator during the Cuban Revolution. He believed that citizens should work for the good of society and not personal profit. His anti-imperialist beliefs led him to assist in rebellions in countries within Africa as well as Latin America.

The Eagle Academy’s Queens website explains the “house model.”
The Eagle Academy’s Queens website appears to glorify Che Guevara.

On June 14, 2014, The Buffalo News reported on what students learn in classrooms at Eagle Academy. Students in the eighth grade were asked several questions about “White America.” The students were asked the following questions:

  • What should be the place of the Negro (“Black and Brown people”) in White America?
  • What were the strengths and weaknesses of each scholar’s plan for improving the Negro?
  • What philosophy would be more acceptable to White America then? White America now?
Students appear to learn about so-called “White America.”