The documentary Precious Knowledge: a Revolutionary Education will be screened on Friday, April 20 at 7 p.m., in the Bell Museum Auditorium. The free screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Crystal Terriquez (pictured), one of the students who is featured in the film.

Precious Knowledge interweaves the stories of students in the Mexican American Studies Program at Tucson High School. While 48 percent of Mexican American students currently drop out of high school, Tucson High’s Mexican American Studies Program was a national model of educational success, with, on average, 93 percent of enrolled students graduating from high school and 85 percent going on to college. The filmmakers spent a year in the classroom documenting the ways the innovative social justice curriculum transformed students into informed and engaged community activists.

Precious Knowledge is timely as Arizona lawmakers recently passed a law giving unilateral power to the state superintendent to abolish ethnic studies classes like the program at Tucson High. Precious Knowledge provides an insider’s perspective to this battle as the student leaders fight to save their classes.

Co-sponsors of the event are the Youth Studies program and Social Justice minor in the School of Social Work, the College of Education and Human Development, the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, the Office of Equity and Diversity, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the Chicano Studies Department, the Graduate Interdisciplinary Group for Sexuality Studies and El Colegio Charter School.

Parking is available for $6 at the 4th Street Ramp. For more information, contact Assistant Professor Katie Johnston-GoodStar.