Thread: Immigrants See Charter Schools as a Haven

January 10, 2009
Immigrants See Charter Schools as a Haven
By SARA RIMER
MINNEAPOLIS — Fartun Warsame, a Somali immigrant, thought she was being a good mother when she transferred her five boys to a top elementary school in an affluent Minneapolis suburb. Besides its academic advantages, the school was close to her job as an ultrasound technician, so if the teachers called, she could get there right away.

“Immediately they changed,â€

offers immigrant parents, who have long been conflicted about their children becoming Americanized

This is one of the problems; i.e. they do not want to assimilate like previous waves of immigrants did.

[quote]With that kind of linguistic talent, Mr. Somo said of his son, “he can work for America anywhere in the world.â€

What really disgusts me is that these kids are insulated from the American culture they were brought into. And who knows what anti-American culture or morals these kids are being taught. Being multi-lingual is good, but to denigrate their country of residence whose citizens employ these parents and pay for the education of their offspring is no excuse. You teach children at home what is right and wrong, and if the lessons have been powerful enough they will differentiate between right and wrong, according to their family traditions.
It seems that these immigrants have become more Americanized than they will admit: those morals and traditions that should be taught at home are now sloughed off to the schools.

If your country is so much better, then go back...please.

Getting lost in America, Mr. Somo explained, means losing your culture, your language, your identity. It means acting like the teenagers the parents see on the street — wearing baggy jeans, smoking, using drugs, disrespecting elders.

Sorry but as daughter of immigrants...I never experienced any of that...all of us went to area schools, studied hard, got good grades, graduated, went to college, went to grad school and now are doing the same with our children. Amongts my children's circle of friends all are going to college, some have been accepted to West Point, the Naval Academy and great prep schools based on their merits...not on their race or ethnicity. How dare Mr. Somo be so bigoted, racist and small-minded.....at our expense. Mr. Somo...if it's so bad here...please put your kids in a private school paid for by you and/or go back to Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya or wherever you came from...but don't come here as an immigrant and refuse to assmilate yourself and your family. Don't expect "tolerance" when you are so divisive and rude.

Perhaps what drove this home to me was an old Law & Order show, where they found an Egyptian immigrant murdered. Long story short, this Egyptian had brought in an Egyptian doctor to perform a circumcision on his grown American daughter. This is important because it is apparently a sin against Allah that women feel anything during the act of procreation, and this is their culture as well as many countries in Africa.
If this is supposed to be a melting pot, it has just become fractured into groups who are here for no other purpose than money and refusing to assimilate.
A few years ago in Fla. a young wealthy woman living legally in her luxury condo was kidnapped by her family and forced back to Saudi Arabia as she refused to marry the man her family had chosen for her. Otherwise she would bring shame on the family.
So these are the kinds of traditions we should accept just to be politically correct? Horse crap! I won't accept anything that goes against American traditions and American laws.

Perhaps what drove this home to me was an old Law & Order show, where they found an Egyptian immigrant murdered. Long story short, this Egyptian had brought in an Egyptian doctor to perform a circumcision on his grown American daughter. This is important because it is apparently a sin against Allah that women feel anything during the act of procreation, and this is their culture as well as many countries in Africa.

Not all cultures or relegions can function together. I don't think that the fact that we have tried to accomodate so many, means we are obligated to tolerate all, giving up our own in the process, and anything they bring in as "fine" under the guise of "tolerance" and "freedom" etc.

Some don't find what we deem untolerable, a problem. Some function quite well and find it ok....are happy and fine. Others don't. I kind of saw America as a place where they could go...the un-happy ones who didn't agree with what was going on in their own country. I welcome them. It's those who come here and try and make what we saw as wrong, as right.
I don't want people here trying to create a country exactly like the one they left. They have a place to go.....HOME. This was the refuge for those that have no place else to go. There's other countries that have taken the mis-fits and outcasts and made a success......Australia is the first to come to mind. A penal colony. They also made the un-workable , workable and have freedom as their base as well. If HOME is what you love and believe is right.......go HOME. Stop trying to change my country.......we made a success of it, in spite of ourselves......or why bother comming here if somewhere else is better?

[quote]“I don’t want to make the same mistake with my younger children,â€

The race-based schools do not want diversity and are very xenophobic. Why are they allowed to operate this way, in America???

These people are not in their home countries, they came here and HERE is what THEY need to adjust to, instead they stick their heads in the ground? When in Rome people, when in Rome. Don't like it? Go back to your home countries and cultures.