I'm sitting here in the Sacramento International Airport, preparing to fly out to Montana to spend some time with my brother and family. I knew this was going to be a frustrating day when I woke up this morning because our country is living in such a state of fear that we can't even take water bottles on airplanes. Snakes can make it on to airplanes, but not water bottles (for those of you who are confused by that sentence, maybe you should ask Samuel L. Jackson about it). I also knew that I would probably get upset at the security checkpoint because it's generally some little short guy who got picked on when he was younger and is now sick on the power that he has to make people strip and lose every sense of dignity they once had before walking through his metal detector. I wasn't prepared, however, for the ridiculous racial profiling that I observed this morning, nor was I prepared for my reaction to it.
There were, by my estimate, no less than 80 people in the security line in front of us this morning. I was watching them all rather closely because I am fascinated by the art of watching people. Out of those 80 people, only one of them was pulled to the side for a full security check, pat down and all. He was an older gentleman, late forties by my guess, he appeared to have a very gentle and understanding spirit, he was wearing a collared shirt with a tie and black jeans. He also had dark skin, a beard, and was wearing a turban. While angry looking twenty-somethings with t-shirts declaring anarchy and upper middle-class white people walked by unnoticed, this gentle-spirited man was pulled aside and humiliated in front of everyone in the security line. Why? Well, he looked like a terrrorist of course. He was wearing a turban and had dark skin, so out of the other 80 people in line he was clearly the only one who posed any kind of potential threat to airport security.
I watched this man as the security guard flagged him down after walking through the metal detector, as the security guard held up a red paddle and yelled "male check on one". I watcehed this man as he was taken off to the side, and secured in the roped off area. He did not react. He merely nodded his head and quietly complied as he was led off and searched, the only one out of at least 80 people that I observed. I looked at his face as walked by him and saw the sadness, the removal of dignity in his eyes. His face looked to me like that of a person who had just lost his right to be human. It made me want to buy a turban, put in on, and walk by his side for a month to experience what his life was like, to give validation to the pain and suffering that he must endure simply because he is different from the rest of us. It made me want to ask the security guard why he wasn't searching me, or Jordana. After all, Jordana's skin is not white, some people think she's from the middle east. Maybe she could be a threat to national security. As I walked by and saw the sadness and the hurt in this man's eyes, I hurt for him. I thought to myself that if I were in his shoes, if I didn't have anti-american sentiments before this experience, I would certainly have them afterwards. I thought to myself that i do not believe it is our freedom that has currently made us one of the most hated countries in the globe, as many of our currenty leaders have told us. Rather, I believe what has given the United States such a negative reputation in the world is our fear and mistreatment of those who are different from us. Certainly there are the religious extremists who want to destroy us because of our corrrupt moral values, but perhaps the way that we tend to dehumanize people is part of this.
I believe that fear only has power over us when we allow it to. I don't believe that it takes an educated person to see that our current state of existence in this country is one of fear. We see it every day, from color-coded threat levels, to fear based news broadcasting, to mass e-mails circulated from our friends and family that tell us to be aware of "those crazy radical muslims" or whatever the case may be. We are living in a constant state of fear, fear of the unkown and fear of that which we don't understand. My wife and I were talking about this on the drive down here this morning. People everywhere are suffering from a generalized sense of anxiety because that is what is being proclaimed. The message that we hear everyday is this: there are imminent threats to this country, and our country's leadership may need to encroach on some people's civil liberties in order to deal with these threats. We are called to trust our leaders because in a time of threat such as this, unity is required. I have to be honest, I struggle with trusting our current leadership. I'm deathly afraid that we are not far off from the type of society that is envisioned in the movie "V for Vendetta", where we blindly submit to totalitarian leadership and sacrifice all civil liberties because we are afraid of an imminent threat. I do not want to be subject to a system of fear any longer. Jesus did not call me to a life of fear and blind subjection, he called me to a life of confidence in him where I constantly weigh everything against his word and Holy Spirit at work in my life.
Clearly, these are issues that have no easy answers, but I am not okay with the disrespect, mistrust, and fear that is constantly being exhibited to those who are "different". This is not the kingdom that Jesus preached, and I firmly believe that it is my responsibility as a follower of Jesus to fight this fear by living a life of love, understanding, and confidence. This life does not involve fear and blind submission to leadership, but confidence and constant evaluation of what leaders are telling us. This is my responsibility as both a citizen of this county and a follower of Jesus. I have a dream that one day soon we won't have to live in fear any longer and constantly be hearing messages such as "due to heigtened security". We're putting bandaids on a lethal wound.
But what do I know? I'm just a 24 year old white american male.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Thursday, August 17, 2006
My Purpose
I'm currently in the middle of applying to the teaching credential program at Sacramento State University and as part of the application I had to write a two-page statement of purpose. I was pretty happy with how it turned out, so I thought I'd share it here. I really feel like I've discovered my purpose in teaching, something that I am truly passionate about, which is really quite exciting. Anyway, here it is:
Having spent the last two years of my life in the field of social work, my life-long passion for social justice has become further refined and clarified. During this time, I have read thoughts by authors such as Paulo Freire and have come to the realization that one of the most powerful tools that exist in our society at present to fight for social justice is education. It is through education that a person’s imagination can be liberated to dream of possibilities beyond their present circumstances. It is through education that a person gains the necessary academic and life skills to make those dreams a reality. While I believe that some changes are necessary in our traditional understanding of the educational system, I firmly believe that education, when used properly, can give hope, power, and meaning and spur individuals to take ownership of their circumstances and be successful in life, regardless of their past and present challenges.
The traditional classroom generally seems to have an air of teacher as expert, students as blank slates who are receiving and learning from the knowledge that is being handed down from the teacher. In this format, students generally have no power. Students are rather expected to perform in a curriculum that is designed in circumstances often far different from their own. Students who do not perform in this model are labeled with painful words such as “troublesome”, “disrespectful”, and perhaps even “stupid” or “incompetent”. I believe that if students feel no control or power in the educational structure, the potential effectiveness of their education will be significantly reduced. In this regard, I very much appreciate Paulo Freire’s idea of “recreating knowledge” in the classroom (Pedagogy for Liberation, 1986), where the teacher is no longer the expert communicating knowledge to the student, but rather teacher and student are learning together. In this framework, students feel more power and ownership of the knowledge that is learned because it is knowledge that they help to create and communicate. For example, I recently taught a life skills class to a group of 14 youth, a significant portion of whom had grown up in the foster care system and been tossed around for the majority of their lives. I was teaching a lesson on respect, which not surprisingly was a big issue for most of these youth. The idea I was hoping to communicate was that we often want to be respected, but we refuse to show respect to others unless they first show it to us. By facilitating a discussion rather than simply lecturing on this idea, students in the class were able to come to their own conclusions based on experiences in their lives and the lessons they learned from this class were therefore far more meaningful than what would have resulted from a lecture.
Certainly not all students struggle in the traditional model of education. I, for example, performed well in school throughout my educational development. However, I also came from a very unique background in which education had been an important part of my family for several generations. I do not believe it is uncommon for many students in the public school system at present to be coming from households in which no one has pursued a college education, and perhaps not finished high school. For students in these circumstances, the traditional teacher as expert model will be ineffective, it will merely perpetuate the societal structure of the powerful and the oppressed, with an ever-widening gap.
I want to teach because I believe that education has the ability to liberate the minds and imaginations of young people to rise above their present circumstances. I want to teach because of the impact that several of my teachers had upon me. I want to help expose students to a world of knowledge in which anything is possible.
Having spent the last two years of my life in the field of social work, my life-long passion for social justice has become further refined and clarified. During this time, I have read thoughts by authors such as Paulo Freire and have come to the realization that one of the most powerful tools that exist in our society at present to fight for social justice is education. It is through education that a person’s imagination can be liberated to dream of possibilities beyond their present circumstances. It is through education that a person gains the necessary academic and life skills to make those dreams a reality. While I believe that some changes are necessary in our traditional understanding of the educational system, I firmly believe that education, when used properly, can give hope, power, and meaning and spur individuals to take ownership of their circumstances and be successful in life, regardless of their past and present challenges.
The traditional classroom generally seems to have an air of teacher as expert, students as blank slates who are receiving and learning from the knowledge that is being handed down from the teacher. In this format, students generally have no power. Students are rather expected to perform in a curriculum that is designed in circumstances often far different from their own. Students who do not perform in this model are labeled with painful words such as “troublesome”, “disrespectful”, and perhaps even “stupid” or “incompetent”. I believe that if students feel no control or power in the educational structure, the potential effectiveness of their education will be significantly reduced. In this regard, I very much appreciate Paulo Freire’s idea of “recreating knowledge” in the classroom (Pedagogy for Liberation, 1986), where the teacher is no longer the expert communicating knowledge to the student, but rather teacher and student are learning together. In this framework, students feel more power and ownership of the knowledge that is learned because it is knowledge that they help to create and communicate. For example, I recently taught a life skills class to a group of 14 youth, a significant portion of whom had grown up in the foster care system and been tossed around for the majority of their lives. I was teaching a lesson on respect, which not surprisingly was a big issue for most of these youth. The idea I was hoping to communicate was that we often want to be respected, but we refuse to show respect to others unless they first show it to us. By facilitating a discussion rather than simply lecturing on this idea, students in the class were able to come to their own conclusions based on experiences in their lives and the lessons they learned from this class were therefore far more meaningful than what would have resulted from a lecture.
Certainly not all students struggle in the traditional model of education. I, for example, performed well in school throughout my educational development. However, I also came from a very unique background in which education had been an important part of my family for several generations. I do not believe it is uncommon for many students in the public school system at present to be coming from households in which no one has pursued a college education, and perhaps not finished high school. For students in these circumstances, the traditional teacher as expert model will be ineffective, it will merely perpetuate the societal structure of the powerful and the oppressed, with an ever-widening gap.
I want to teach because I believe that education has the ability to liberate the minds and imaginations of young people to rise above their present circumstances. I want to teach because of the impact that several of my teachers had upon me. I want to help expose students to a world of knowledge in which anything is possible.
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