The article excerpted below shows the usual media sympathy for the cultural difficulties refugee kids face in adjusting to American schools. The subject is a sort of preview school set up in Brooklyn to help them with stress-free practice sessions (no loud sirens), called the Refugee Youth Summer Academy.
Naturally there is no mention of enormous joblessness among adult refugees, which would distract from the earnest tone of the discussion.
Refugees prepare for next challenge: School in US, AP, August 12, 2010
For their first fire drill, students at the Refugee Youth Summer Academy trooped out of the building behind their teachers. All that was missing were the sirens.
The blaring alarms had been muted, for fear they could trigger terror in children who recently arrived from war zones and other conflict areas. The silent fire drill was part of the balancing act for staff at the six-week program that helps youngsters who have survived wars and refugee camps prepare for a new experience — American public school.
For some of the kids, formal education has been haphazard or nonexistent, said Elizabeth Demchak, principal of the school, run by the International Rescue Committee, which works with refugees and asylum-seekers.
For others, school consisted of sitting and taking notes surrounded by dozens of others with a teacher reciting a lecture. Preparing them means helping them learn how to go to school along with what they learn there.
Not much out of the same-old do-gooder tapdance so far. However, my BS detector popped up when I saw the photo below with the cut line explaining the subject being taught to quite young children: social justice.
Aren’t the Marxists trolling a bit young these days? And what do eight-year-olds (I’m guessing from the picture) learn about social justice anyway? When to phone the ACLU about suing your teacher? Why the American people who generously welcomed you are actually slavering racists? How to major in the ever-useful ethnic studies in college?
I would love to be a fly on the wall.
[ORIGINAL CAPTION] In this Aug. 3, 2010 photo, Hector Estrada, top center, who teaches social justice in a theater setting at the Refugee Youth Academy, address a group of immigrant students at the academy in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The Refugee Youth Academy is a six-week program run by the International Rescue Committee that tries to help refugee parents and children get familiar with what American school is all about.
