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| Time, July 7, 2025 |
“As a former undocumented immigrant, I know this fear.
I have felt it. I have lived with the uncertainty of wondering whether a knock
at the door meant separation from everything I loved.”
Alberto M Carvalho writes these lines
in the latest volume of the Time
magazine. Carvalho is the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School
District, the second largest public school system in the USA. He wrote the Time
article after seeing Donald Trump’s atrocious act of perpetrating a
military-like operation on the country’s schools in the name of checking on
undocumented immigrants. The result of such an operation, writes Carvalho, “is
trauma, fear, and distrust – particularly in our schools, where children should
feel safest.”
“Every child, regardless of
citizenship, has a constitutional right to free public education,” Carvalho
asserts. The school is the safest place for many children, he says; it is the
only place where they feel truly safe, truly seen. When Trump’s agents create
chaos on the campus, America is not becoming great again. America is destroying
itself.
Carvalho himself was an undocumented
immigrant. He landed in the USA, along with his parents and five siblings, in
the 1980s. He worked in construction and restaurants (as a dishwasher) and was
homeless for a time. But America brought him up. America educated him, gave him
dreams, made him a hero. America of those days was more or less true to its
commitment to help the huddled masses breathe free.
Does Trump know the inscription on the
Statue of Liberty? “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning
to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the
homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
And Trump himself is a grandson of immigrants
in America. His father was born to German immigrants and his mother was an
immigrant from Scotland. Who is not an immigrant in America?
Trump is a mere trader, not a
statesman, and incapable of being a visionary. Traders look for economic
profits. Visionaries create heroes. Create heroes, that’s what Carvalho is
demanding in his Time article. And that process begins at school.
Education is not a bargaining chip,
writes Carvalho. It is a birthright of every child. He demands of Trump to
formulate policies “that are humane, lawful, and consistent with our values.”
Instead Trump is creating fear on the campus. “The future of this country,”
Carvalho goes on, “sits in our classrooms every day. And how we treat them will
define who we are and what happens next in our nation.”
Give hope to children. Give them
dreams. Help them become heroes, not beggars.
I was so touched by Carvalho’s
article that I put up a short video on Facebook rather impulsively. Here it is if you care;
it’s not much anyway. But it shows that I share Carvalho’s sentiments. I have
been a teacher too all through my life. I can feel Carvalho’s emotions in my
veins.
I’m concerned about what is happening
to education in my own country which is currently led by a person who is not
unlike Donald Trump. .jpg)
Alberto M Carvalho
Just transcribing from the Facebook response. Plato described the Sophists of his time, as peddlers of knowledge-ware. As you described, Trump is just real-estate agent, a trader... He cannot have anything to with education, in the true sense of the term. He is only nailing on the coffin of Education, the last nail. We have killed education... Reducing it to a toolkit of skills and technique, denuding it of its human content. Trump is only presiding over the Seshakriyalu... Laying to rest and cremation rites...
ReplyDeleteHow much difference a leader can make! I have wondered time and again how America made the mistake of electing this man. Maybe, too many Americans are now regretting.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteA profound appeal... YAM xx
And not just the schools. ICE is raiding all sorts of places in LA, and they're using terrible tactics. The fear and anxiety is the point. They want to subdue us. These are cruel people given power to unleash terror, and they're doing it. I never wanted to live under an authoritarian government, and here we are.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, where I'm at, it's likely that some of my students are undocumented. I don't care. And I don't want to see them taken away, either.
If there is one thing that should take top priority in any society, it's education. Reasons are too obvious to state. No one should mess with it.
ReplyDelete