Socially Conscious Fidace Part 2
So GNN is on point once again. Further to my rant about education, check this interview. The passage below I found particularly scary/moving/disgraceful in equal measure and directed at different people and institutions.
From GNN site:
Probably the most shocking passage in your book is one in which you speak with a student named Mireya, from Freemont High School in Los Angeles, who is moved to tears of frustration because she wants to go to college, but the only classes available to her are sewing and hairdressing courses, rather than college prep classes.
Everyone who has read the book has said that is the story that made them cry. Mireya wanted to go to Boston University. She was eloquent, and her teachers said she was perfectly capable of going to a first-rate university. She said the school had made her take sewing the previous year, and when I spoke with her, they were going to make her take hairdressing. This was a school of 5,000 kids in South Central Los Angeles, with hardly a white kid in the school. Now, it turns out hairdressing and sewing weren?t exactly required, but that students were expected to take two classes in what were called ?the technical arts.? But whereas at Beverly Hills High School that requirement could be filled by taking a class in residential architecture, computer graphics or broadcast journalism ? things that perhaps have some relevance to college preparation. At Freemont the choices were sewing and hairdressing. Mireya cried and said to me, ?I don?t need to sew; my mother?s a seamstress in a sewing factory.? That?s when a terrific student, Fortino ? he reminded me of a sort of Latino Malcolm X, because he had this look of cynical intelligence in his eyes ? said to her, ?The owners of the sewing factories need workers, don?t they?? And she said, ?Well, I guess they do.? And he said, ?They?re not going to hire their own kids for those jobs.? Another student naively said, ?Why not?? And Mireya said, ?Because they can grow beyond themselves, but we remain the same.? To me that was the most moving bit of dialogue in the whole book.
Everyone who has read the book has said that is the story that made them cry. Mireya wanted to go to Boston University. She was eloquent, and her teachers said she was perfectly capable of going to a first-rate university. She said the school had made her take sewing the previous year, and when I spoke with her, they were going to make her take hairdressing. This was a school of 5,000 kids in South Central Los Angeles, with hardly a white kid in the school. Now, it turns out hairdressing and sewing weren?t exactly required, but that students were expected to take two classes in what were called ?the technical arts.? But whereas at Beverly Hills High School that requirement could be filled by taking a class in residential architecture, computer graphics or broadcast journalism ? things that perhaps have some relevance to college preparation. At Freemont the choices were sewing and hairdressing. Mireya cried and said to me, ?I don?t need to sew; my mother?s a seamstress in a sewing factory.? That?s when a terrific student, Fortino ? he reminded me of a sort of Latino Malcolm X, because he had this look of cynical intelligence in his eyes ? said to her, ?The owners of the sewing factories need workers, don?t they?? And she said, ?Well, I guess they do.? And he said, ?They?re not going to hire their own kids for those jobs.? Another student naively said, ?Why not?? And Mireya said, ?Because they can grow beyond themselves, but we remain the same.? To me that was the most moving bit of dialogue in the whole book.
Here's the link to the full article: http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/5024/Apartheid_America
I promise to fix my other links soon.
posted by Fidace at 8:33 am
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