Comparing Educational Impacts
To understand all the texts, I examined the life story of the authors. Lorena’s story was one of the personal hardships of a young female illegal citizen, while Myles Horton’s life journey took place in his birth state of Georgia. Though they have vastly different backgrounds they are united by their actions to improve the lives of farmworkers in the rural southeast region of America. When reading Jose Calderon’s story I feel like he was the bridge between Lorena’s and Myles’ story. He applied similar concepts of using education as a system that gives more opportunities to struggling communities. Lorena believes in an organization’s power is from its passion and the leader’s drive. Horton approaches education from the unique frame that education must happen organically and have solid roots to be truly impactful. While education and running an organization are not the same thing, I believe they are intertwined when it comes to helping a population. Jose Calderon addresses how his work starts in the classroom, social change sparked by the search of a resolution to deep systematic issues. Calderon described this process as “Drawing on their discussions with workers, students organize various projects that push for social change”(Calderon, 2009, p.2). This quote made me sit back and think about how our program of service learning flows parallel to some of Calderon’s organization.
I thought Lorena and Myles Horton’s work with a certain community could be applied to many other issues of oppression in today’s society. When working with the farmers the methods both aimed to improve quality of life but were executed differently. I perceived Horton’s organization Highlander’s effect as a long term solution to a core problem, whereas Lorena’s work was term based, though both did change the flow of the farmers positively. I think Horton’s providing “opportunity for growth”(Horton, 1997, p. 131) gives people a second chance at a better future. I saw the same empathy for another’s suffering when I read about how Lorena’s boss grants choose to accept that she was an illegal citizen and allow her to continue her job.
The themes of these texts forced me to look at the human suffering that happens where we least expect it and highlighted how far practicing kindness and empathy can go in this world. In all these stories some people used their resources to assist others. Calderon explains this best in the following quote when speaking about the teacher that learned Spanish to help him learn “Certain individuals or groups have the power to define dominant culture, and therefore the power to oppress or liberate others. Power exists in language”(Calderon, 2009, p.2). His teacher while not knowing Spanish used her resources to try and meet the need of one of her students. This resonated with my current life path. I recently decided to try to learn Spanish. My goal is to become a Psychologist, and I believe learning Spanish will broaden my path and allow me to reach and positively impact more people.
