ERIC Number: ED481650
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2004
Pages: 14
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
The Challenge of Change: A Gringo Remembers Tough Choices.
Beck, Scott A. L.
Since 1994, at least three children of migrant workers have been maimed in Georgia packing houses while waiting for their parents to finish work. In this personal narrative, a former migrant educational outreach worker describes one such incident in May 1996, in which a 2-year-old lost his hand to the machinery of a Georgia onion packing shed. The incident demonstrates the lax enforcement of laws governing the working conditions, living conditions, and education of migrant families. Although he was at the location on the day of the accident, the author was constrained from speaking by implicit threats to his own job security if he broke the local code of silence. Such constraints were an outgrowth of the hierarchy that oversees the funding of migrant education. In a very tangible way, the region's migrant education was controlled by local school boards whose traditional membership included farmers and their families. These school boards had demonstrated their indifference to non-English-speaking students, instituting special services to such students only after a civil rights investigation. The situation at the state level was even more problematic, as the state superintendent of schools showed reluctant and sometimes hostile responses to the growing needs of immigrant, language-minority, and Latino students. The dilemmas and possible choices faced by migrant education professionals in such circumstances are discussed. (SV)
Publication Type: Opinion Papers; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Georgia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A