On February 18, 2020, I had the privilege of giving a keynote address at the Association of Teacher Educators Annual Meeting in Atlantic City, NJ.
In my address, I focused on intermediary organizations’ activities in shaping teacher education policies and ways in which teacher educators can use some of reformers’ strategies in their policy advocacy. The full text of the address and the presentation slides are available here.
During 2019-2020 academic year, I was a Global Teacher Education Fellow with the Longview Foundation.
This fellowship was a part of my journey of learning about global education and decolonization of teacher education.
During my fellowship year, I began assembling resources that I have found useful and insightful for thinking about ways in which teacher education can be transformed to make space for critical explorations of the world and the U.S. position in it. If you have suggestions about what should be added to this list, please, share!
Google Doc with Global Education Resources
As a part of my fellowship, I revised a course on diversity that I teach. Below is the video of my presentation describing the frameworks I used and the changes I made.
I did not know that wild violets grow in Alabama fields. Turns out they do, right in my neighborhood. I did not know that in the back of my yard grows a dogwood tree with tender blossoms, flowers that serve as a symbol of rebirth and revival. Granted I have not been living in this house long, but the three years of never-ending busy-ness, endless to-do lists, deadlines always looming larger than life, worries about the future, parenting obligations, and health issues choked out my ability to see life around me. Now, I stop to pay attention even if for a brief moment to marvel at the beauty that has been so elusive before.
This pandemic taught me many lessons already. For one, it has cracked open the fragility of human life. In the West, but particularly in the U.S., there is an implicit assumption of invincibility. And it is contagious. “Best healthcare system in the world!” “We will win this war!” “We will not let this enemy prevail!” It is so easy to believe that tragedy and horror will pass by. But friends from New York write about the constant sound of howling ambulances; news stories describe the stench from unrefrigerated trucks full of decomposing bodies; nurses and doctors share stories of trauma and desperation from seeing dozens of patients die daily. Assumptions of invincibility are pretentious and dangerous. They take us down a much darker path.
That is the major lesson of the pandemic so far – “unforeseeable circumstances” and “unchartered waters” bring out the best in some people and the worst in others. Ultimately, these events become a true mirror of who we are as a society. Or rather, what we have become. Years of ragged individualism and aggressive propagation of libertarian ideas left us stranded on the island on which homo hominin lupus est – “a man is a wolf to another man.” The widespread disregard for the vulnerable, for the community, for the well-being of others is astonishing. Of all the tragic twists and turns that I could anticipate, the scale of the protests against shelter-in-place policies and the aggressiveness against basic means of protecting public health, such as masks, have been devastating to observe. I have been wrestling with the question of how a society gets to this place.
A part of the crisis is a broken economic system that puts profits over the well-being of people. The meritocratic narrative of rewards only for “hard work” supported the decimation of safety nets. With incomes lost, millions of Americans have nothing to fall back on in the time of crisis. When decisions were being made, they either actively supported or silently observed how social protections were eliminated believing that “those people” should work harder to earn their piece of the pie. Now, instead of realizing that they themselves were shortchanged by this ideology, they demand a return “to normal,” with a complete disregard for the loss of life this will incur. It does not help that in some states, there have been clear connections between groups that are organizing the protests and the billionaire class. A classic case from old philosophical texts – those with limited economic resources are working against their own interests as individuals or members of the working class to serve the needs and interests of their masters.
But there are also deeper issues at hand. Much of the American society has learned to live for pleasure – instant gratification to consumerist desires. Isolation cuts off opportunities to engage in rampant consumerism of goods, services, images, and pleasures. Being alone reveals the holes in one’s humanity created both by consumerism and fast-paced lives in pursuit of profit or sustenance. The space for leisure to cultivate hobbies that allow people to create, produce, observe, marvel, or contemplate has been erased by the rat race of non-stop running between work, meetings, activities, get-togethers, shopping, TV shows, and errands. As a cultural outsider, I am continually amazed at how consumerism is even taught to toddlers, both through garages full of trinkets and through busy schedules of soccer games, swimming lessons, and play-dates. When do they ever get to be children, I wonder. To just be.
In a recent interview, Chris Hedges – a Pulitzer-winning journalist and writer – described the current social crisis as a result of long-standing policies and practices, which in the long run have produced a society of spectators. He makes a point in his other works that 24-hour entertainment through every imaginable medium – streaming, TVs, ads, podcasts, phone apps, sporting events, and social media – cultivates a lack of critical thinking. On some level, this point resonated with me because I have spent a lot of my time thinking about schools and educational institutions producing spectators both in the U.S. and in other countries. I wrote extensively that certain educational goals run the danger of producing masses that do not question and do not engage in a social critique. Spectators.
Applied to the current crisis, however, this perspective helped it all make sense – spectators come together to derive pleasure from an act of entertainment. They are present to get their emotional high – not to be somebody, not to act decisively, not to make a difference, not to show care for the well-being of others, but to see and be seen. Their goal is to be satisfied by the show. A spectator has no moral or ethical obligation to a spectator right next to him or her. As Guy Debord – a late French philosopher – explained it, all spectators are united through a divided, fragmented, and disconnected act of being connected to a spectacle. We might all tune in to watch the spectacle of daily coronavirus briefings from the White House but that does not makes us connected or united to each other. We remain separated by our social classes, cultural groups, values, and beliefs. And after seeing the staggering numbers of infections and deaths, we remain on different social planes about our concerns for our neighbors and our community. Some will care, many others will not. And since the show is getting more and more dissatisfying, the edginess will grow and the acts of violence will increase. Homo hominem lupus est.
Spectators are also not expected to question the show. Theater goers repeat lines from the plays they enjoyed. They do not test them for truthfulness, internal logic, or factual support. Remember Hamilton – I am not throwing away my shot? What a catchy line to repeat and live by. In the same way, this pandemic has been a breeding ground for dangerous ideas that fly in the face of reason but spectators pick them up, write them on poster boards, and march into the streets to chant them back. In the era of widespread misinformation, catchy slogans become lethal weapons.
Some empires decline gradually, some fall apart abruptly. I was born in the Soviet Union – an empire that fell when no one expected it to fall. And I say to you, my friends, welcome to the end of the empire. We are about to witness something really spectacular, but not in an entertaining kind of way.
If practiced right, quarantine has given us the best gift we could ever ask for as a society – solitude (I know it might not feel that way when you are locked up with relatives and children, but still). Solitude is an amazing opportunity for introspection. For centuries, people across the world sought solitude to gain wisdom. Even though neither solitude, nor wisdom, is held up in much regard in this society, quarantine lessons suggest that we need to rethink our lives and our priorities. And perhaps that, which was not highly regarded before, could be considered as an opportunity to reimagine the world and build a better society. I don’t think the fall of the empire can be averted, but at least a better vision for us as a people and as a society can be created for those who will emerge from the rubble.
In my book Teacher education reform as political theater: Global policy dramas, I analyze how in 2014 a small group of Russian reformers enacted teacher education modernization reform despite great opposition from educators and the public. Using rich ethnographic material, the book captures how the official story of improving education obscures a radical change in purposes of schooling, in constructions of teachers’ work, and in teacher education designs. Ultimately, despite the official rhetoric, modernization reforms normalize social inequality, introduce a conservative social change, and position Russian education at the service of global corporations.
“Masks and Guises” is the second chapter from this book and uses the concept of masks to analyze the Concept of Support for the Development of Pedagogical Education. Even though most educators believed it was designed by the Russian Ministry of Education (MOE), it was written by a small group of reformers (Anton Mikhailovich [1], Joseph Abramovich, Maksim Davydovich, Vadim Alekseyevich, Oleg Victorovich, and their colleagues), most of whom were affiliated with Lyutvino Economics University (LEU). This group prepared the initial text of the policy (the LEU version); subsequently, the MOE distributed a slightly modified version for public discussion.
[1] All personal and geographic names are pseudonyms to protect participants’ anonymity and confidentiality.
“Money matters: Political theater of competitive grant-funding and reform ideologies” was presented during Eurasia Special Interest Group Highlighted Session at the Comparative and International Education Society Annual Meeting in Mexico City on March 26, 2018.
On October 4, Arne Duncan issued an open letter to America’s college presidents and education school deans urging them “to create revolutionary change” in teacher education. The letter that appeared on the Brookings Institute website seemed to repeat many of the litanies shared before: teacher education lacks rigor, teacher education is not changing, teacher candidates are not prepared well enough, and together these factors put K-12 students at risk. Surprisingly, Duncan cited a report by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) that focused on grade inflation as evidence of the low quality of teacher education. NCTQ does not have a great reputation for producing solid research, yet out of thirteen paragraphs of Duncan’s letter, eight were devoted to the NCTQ report. The ultimate point of the letter was that “systematic change” has yet to happen in the sector and holding teacher candidates to higher standards is a first step on the path towards change.
The problem with Duncan’s position, however, is that it is a bit misleading. Change has been happening. Enrollments are lower than they were in the past; curriculum is narrower with questions of equity and social justice disappearing from the standards; and new bureaucratic demands pile higher every year.
Change is happening, but so far it has been very subtle.
For example, if you are in the field of teacher education, have you ever given much thought to what CAEP stands for? It stands for something mundane, you could say. The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation.
Prior accrediting bodies in the US were NCATE – the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education – and TEAC – Teacher Education Accreditation Council. CAEP emerged as a result of their merger.
The change in titles is very subtle – it is as if the same letters were tossed into a bag to produce the name. Yet, instead of focusing on Teacher Education, CAEP focuses on Educator Preparation.
This phrase – Educator Preparation – does not appear just in CAEP’s title. It resurfaces in policy-makers’ professional associations, reports of non-profit organizations, and mission statements of think-tanks:
The difference is subtle but even as a junior scholar in the field I would never describe myself as someone who is involved in educator preparation. By default, I always speak of teacher education.
No matter how subtle, however, perhaps this change is indicative of bigger changes that are already unfolding around us. CAEP focuses on Educator Preparation Providers – EPPs, whereas NCATE focused “on the professional education unit, which is defined as the administrative body at an educator preparation provider (EPP).” Technically, both use the term EPP, but CAEP no longer focuses on the “education unit,” it focuses on the provider. A google search for “educator preparation provider” returns hits from several different states: Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, Colorado, Wisconsin, Tennessee, which under the already familiar category of EPP – Educator Preparation Provider – list traditional university/college-based programs, alternative programs, or completely online programs. The numbers of alternative programs are staggering. What is even more staggering is how they describe themselves. Phrases like “fast track to success,” “affordable,” and “real world program” sound like catchy gimmicks for training door-to-door salesmen, rather than members of an intellectual profession.
The focus on providers is particularly jarring because it is reminiscent of changes in teacher education in England. In the 90’s, conservative groups managed to push through legislation that opened the teacher education market to multiple providers. Estimates vary as to the exact number of routes into the teaching profession, but currently there seem to be somewhere between 17 and 19 different tracks that one can take into teaching. Customers – i.e. future teachers – can work toward the Qualified Teacher Status through any one of those tracks:
If you visit websites that describe these tracks, you will see the same order as the one given here that positions university-based degree route as the last option that takes most time and money, clearly inconveniencing the customer.
One of the most recent and most interesting newcomers to this scene is Pearson, now offering diplomas and certificates in teaching, some of which lead to a teacher aid status while others can qualify one to be a full- time teacher. “All you need is a credit card” states the cheerful advertisement for one of the programs that Pearson offers. In this context, some scholars gently suggested that university-based teacher education may be on its deathbed.
Why is this important?
Because in the British bureaucratese, the proliferation of these tracks into teaching was accompanied by a similar semantic shift – first the switch from teacher education to teacher training, then from programs to providers. This shift to providers also begs a question whether CAEP will be charged with overseeing multiple routes into teaching, not just the university-based programs the way NCATE and TEAC did.
Subtle changes like these are everywhere: from the name of the field to who the providers are, from what counts as knowledge and valid research to what the final outcome of “educator preparation” should be (more on that later).
But clearly, Arne Duncan wants more radical and more revolutionary change. The trouble is that it is not clear that the changes Arne Duncan is advocating for will create a strong economy or informed citizenry that he is promising. After all, drastic reforms in teacher education 20 years ago did not show dramatic improvements in England’s performance on international assessments. Brexit raised doubts both about how informed English citizens truly are and about how great the economy is doing. The conversation about raising standards is also rather suspect. There is no evidence that the measures that Duncan advocates for will actually create higher standards for the profession. What seems to be happening instead is political theater – by using the spotlight directed at the “low-quality” teacher education programs, reformers manage to obscure the proliferation of routes into teaching and a redefinition of how teachers can be prepared for working in schools.
When Duncan’s letter came out, however, I had a heavy feeling that his writing was meant to prepare the way for bigger things to come. Just as I suspected, this week the federal government released new regulations for evaluating teacher education programs. The revolutionary change that Duncan so desired is clearly underway. Being of Russian heritage, however, I think of revolutions as not only the events of dramatic change, but also the events of dramatic loss. Perhaps it is time to #reclaimteachered.
This blog captures a variety of writing projects I have undertaken. Most of the writing presented here is my ongoing work on scholarly and academic projects. These pieces reflect some of the research that I have presented at conferences or that I am preparing for publication in a more extended form. Other writing is much more personal and political. I include it here to underscore how interconnected personal, political, and academic journeys have been in my intellectual life.
Please, feel free to leave comments and engage in a conversation. My ultimate hope is to create spaces for dialogue, rather than monologic reflection.
In the US and in many countries around the world, teachers are leaving the profession. To address acute teacher shortages, policy-makers have begun hiring international teachers for US or UK schools or bringing in hires with limited prior preparation for teaching through such organizations as TFA, its global partners, or other alternative programs. While these temporary solutions may partially address immediate needs, they don’t solve the underlying problems that have contributed to the current teacher shortage crisis.
Part of the problem is not just what solutions are offered and how effective they are, but also how the problem is framed. Reformers, policy-makers, and edupreneurs often claim that teachers don’t stay in schools because they lack practical preparation necessary for the job. In other words, their argument is that teachers leave the profession because of low quality teacher preparation they receive. While teacher preparation may contribute to some of the challenges teachers face, I would argue it constitutes only a minor part of what pushes them out of the profession.
This summer my husband started teaching third-grade at a local public school on an emergency license. Since school started three weeks ago, I have been watching the transformations he has been undergoing and the struggles he has been facing. In many respects, he has been quite fortunate to get a job at a school that has a good reputation, in general provides support to its teachers, and conveys to the children a message of love. Those are all very important perks.
But there are many challenges.
First, the salary. He was very fortunate that his ten years of teaching experience across a variety of contexts count. His starting salary is not that of a beginning teacher but that which a teacher with ten years of experience would normally make. He was also very fortunate to have his master’s and doctorate count. That added several thousand to his pay. Even with all of these additions, however, he is barely making $47,000. On a personal level, we have the privilege of being a two-income household with my employer covering my health insurance. If I did not have a job and insurance coverage, we would have struggled financially, even with all the pay additions he received. On the policy level, his salary presents a bit of a conundrum. The news sources in Arizona state that the average teachers’ salary is $49,000. With many teachers leaving after three years and very few veterans staying in schools, the claim about average salaries is deeply puzzling.
Second, the job is physically overwhelming. Every day he comes back home exhausted after 12 or 14-hour long days. He is on his feet all day, constantly surrounded by kids, eating at best on the go, barely having time to use the bathroom. When he comes home, he can’t sit down and relax. He has to prep for the next day or run out to get supplies. By 8, his eyes glaze. By 9, they turn red. By 10, he’s out, even if he still has prep to finish for the next day. During weekends, it is grading and prepping time. There are things that we still manage to do around the house, but most of the time he has to spend catching up on things for work. His feet hurt, his back hurts, his shoulders hurt. We have taught in many different contexts around the world but nothing has ever taken such a toll on him.
Third, the job is taxing psychologically and emotionally. He has 31 third-graders in his class. Keeping them on task, getting them to do their work, and making sure that they learn is challenging for numerous reasons. They are chatty and hard to manage. Some of the kids have serious problems they are dealing with. He often finds out about them only after crises flare up and melt-downs happen. All of this falls on his shoulders. As the primary adult responsible for all these children, he has quite a burden to carry.
Fourth, there is little time left during the school day for prepping, organizing the classroom, or getting the materials ready. The one period a day when he could get some of this work done often gets lost on getting kids to and back from special sessions, taking care of his own meetings, or attending to any other unplanned emergencies. The printer and the copier can break down and no one receives any information about when they will be back up. The projector in his classroom has been broken since day one. If it worked, it would have greatly helped with instruction or mitigated the absence of teaching materials when the printer breaks down. Together all these problems only further exacerbate an already challenging situation.
Fifth, there is the question of what position teachers occupy in the school. The curriculum in use is scripted and even though some administrators accept the possibility that teachers should have some freedom in how they implement it, there are still expectations of what needs to be covered on what day and at what speed. Most of the children in the school come from households that live below poverty line; for most of them, English is not their first language. His school also has one of the largest populations of homeless students in the area. Yet those factors have little bearing on how teachers and children will interact with the curriculum. There are mind-numbing PD sessions where the person in charge mostly clicks on links on the curriculum webpage. There are also moments where taking time off (because I had my citizenship ceremony) is regarded with great suspicion and distaste. His team is considered the team of trouble-makers (let’s say he is fortunate to be a part of a team) because they are critical thinkers who are concerned about matters of equity and social justice in their work. Teams that are more appreciated by the administration are the teams that are less critical of what they are asked to do. Together these factors underscore how (micro)managed teachers are and how “professional” becomes less and less applicable to the positions they occupy in schools.
Sixth, (and my list can go on but I will stop soon), there is that fleeting moment that can keep a teacher in a classroom despite all the other challenges – the moment when children’s eyes lit up and they have their “aha” moments. While he is happy to share the stories of when children got excited because they understood something or were finally able to do a math problem that they could not figure out before, those moments are hard to create in a classroom with 31 children and uneven external support. In the beautiful moments when children see a bug in the hallway and stop to look at it, instead of engaging with their curiosity and sense of wonder, he has to keep reminding them that there are rules and procedures to be followed – “voices off” and hurry to the next class. Most traumatizing are the tests. When parents brought their children in before school started, many commented on how stressed out their children become when they have to take tests. District pre-tests have already taken a day away and caused some of the children worry about how their performance on these pre-tests will affect their report card. The real doozy is coming in March and April when one test after another will take away most of the instruction time and any hope that learning can ever be fun (or worthwhile on its own terms).
There is so much more that can be and should be said and none of this is new. Anyone who has spent time in schools teaching or observing teachers would have seen a version or at least some parts of what I am describing. The situation is different in private schools, as a recent book “Secret Lives of Teachers” suggests. The situation might be a little better in suburban schools. But those are also not the schools where most of teacher flight is happening. It is schools like the one where my husband is now teaching that have to put a clause in teachers’ contracts that if they leave before the end of the school year, $2500 will be deducted from their salaries to cover a permanent sub. Even though it is a good school as far as urban public schools go, the HR have seen enough turnover to incorporate this clause into all new contracts.
The point is that what has become of teaching in the last fifteen years is dehumanizing to teachers and to students. It robs most people involved in the schooling processes of dignity, meaning, and joy. Concerns over teacher shortages – and the quality of education in general – are awfully misplaced if teacher education is blamed for what is currently happening in K-12 schools. In light of teachers’ experiences, suggestions that better-prepared teachers will make better schools are deeply misguided.
Collectively, we need to re-think what is happening to public education when people who turn schools into for-profit enterprises run the show. We also need to think more carefully about the role of educational research in this crisis situation. While teacher preparation may indeed need to be improved, educational researchers and teacher educators should build alliances and support teachers and communities they serve in the struggle for more equal educational opportunities for all. Many are already doing this. But I wonder how the situation could change if there was a more consolidated response from the field. I also believe that it is important to remember that this is not a uniquely American crisis. Similar and much worse struggles are happening around the world and it is worthwhile to re-imagine how solidarity among teachers, educators, and researchers can be built across national borders.
On a more personal note, if you are teaching at a public school in Arizona or know someone who is or has taught here in the past, I am looking for folks who might be willing to have a conversation about their experiences. I promise confidentiality and anonymity, but hope that different teachers’ stories and narratives will help stimulate a conversation about a much-needed change in schools. If you might be interested to have a conversation, please, email me helen.aydarova@gmail.com.
On July 29th, 2016, I became a US citizen. The immigration officer presiding over the ceremony said that this would be a second birthday for everyone taking the oath that day. “Except on this birthday you won’t get any older,” she chuckled out a worn-out joke. Perhaps it was a second birthday. But it was also a moment of death. Something inside of you dies when you raise your right hand and, choking on tears, mumble “I pledge allegiance…”
For several weeks before the oath, I would choke up any time when I tried to practice it. On the day of the ceremony, I told myself not to cry. When stubborn tears were streaming down my face, I told myself not to lose control. When sobs shook my body, all I could tell myself was to cry as quietly as possible not to get kicked out of the courtroom. Thankfully, I was not the only one crying. Everyone who came to the front to share their experiences of becoming a US citizen had to reach out for the tissues handed to them by the immigration officer. Quiet sobs from the audience assured them that we were in this sea of tears together.
Many people beam with pride when they look at crying immigrants. “They are so happy to become the citizens of this great country that they cannot contain their joy.” For many people, it is the case.
It was not for me.
For many years, I was torn by the aggressive US imperialism, US hypocrisy called “democracy,” and the endless injustice I saw around me. Injustice drowned in compulsive consumerism, political complacency, and deep divisions. “Divided States of America” is how I called the US to myself.
For many years, I could not imagine myself pledging allegiance to the country that used drones to bomb unsuspecting civilians in its “War on Terror.” I could not imagine pledging allegiance to the country that invaded Iraq under the false premises of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and sent it into the abyss of violence and disorder. I could not imagine pledging allegiance to the country that supported a violent conflict in Syria that displaced millions of people, caused a refugee crisis in Europe, and then turned a blind eye on thousands of civilian deaths. I could not imagine pledging allegiance to the country that was training rebels that were turning over to ISIS. The unstoppable violence against so many countries – and I am only writing about some of the conflicts of the last 15 years – made it hard for me to say that I could identify myself as a US citizen.
I could not imagine pledging allegiance to the country that has the highest incarceration rates in the world, that has the highest rates of deaths from gun violence and yet does nothing to change this situation, that has such high levels of police brutality against people of color that #BlackLivesMatter protests now take place not only in LA and DC but also in London and Sydney. I could not imagine pledging allegiance to one of the richest countries that also has one of the highest child poverty rates in the world and one of the most unequal educational systems among the developed nations.
How did I end up in that courtroom then? In the fall of 2015 and early 2016, I watched Bernie Sanders’ campaign and listened to his message of equality, justice, and peace. For the first time in my life, I could imagine pledging allegiance to this country. It was not the US I saw; it was the US that this man envisioned. Call me naïve if you want, but for me, it was truly a future to believe in. His words gave me hope, faith, and courage. Three days before my citizenship oath, Bernie Sanders moved that the convention suspends its rules and nominates Hillary Clinton for the President of the United States. The email leaks that emerged only days before the convention made it clear that there was little justice in the primaries and in the final selection of the presidential nominee. It broke my heart to see Sanders’ supporters silenced during the convention and ignored by the mainstream media in its aftermath.
When I cried during the ceremony, I cried over these injustices. “The land of the free and the home of the brave” sounded like a sarcastic commentary on so many of this summer’s events.
But I also cried over the injustices that brought me here in the first place.
In that courtroom, more than anywhere else in the world, I felt most acutely how much I have been robbed of the opportunities to have a life and a home in the place where I was born. The desperate poverty that my family, my neighborhood, and, with the exception of a few criminals, the rest of Ukraine (and most recently Russia) slid into, is hard to put in words. The part of town where I grew up used to house the workers from nearby factories and plants. With the shutdown of all industries, the levels of unemployment, poverty, crime, alcoholism, and drug abuse spiked up to unprecedented levels. The spread of AIDS reached alarming rates. Friends from school were dying from overdoses and from getting shot by fellow gang members. None of this was a part of life of this community in years prior to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In the decade that followed the collapse, my mother was proud that once a day we still had a meal with some meat in it. Other families we knew could no longer afford even that. When I started university, I started working. I earned my own money and was proud that I could buy my own clothes. I was a proud owner of one pair of pants, one skirt, and two tops. I also had a pair of jeans and two summer dresses. That’s what a good life was like.
Amidst all of this, like many other citizens of the former USSR, I dreamed of this place called America. What did I know about it? Only what I saw in soap operas like “Santa Barbara” and “Beverly Hills, 90210.” Only what I read in Stephen King’s and Danielle Steel’s novels. Only what I learned at the university as an English major, memorizing basic facts about the US government, economy, history, political system, and literature (which made studying for the citizenship exam significantly easier, by the way). But apart from that, I knew very little.
The little I did know was just enough to dream of coming here.
Six months after I arrived in the US as an exchange student, I watched in disbelief George W. Bush announce the beginning of the “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and the US jets drop bombs on Baghdad. Incredulous, I listened to Americans around me cheer for this unjustifiable act of violence. I just turned 20. My American Dream began to turn sour.
In years since then, I learned how the US imposed the doctrine of “shock therapy” on the former USSR and destroyed the economies of most countries in that region. The introduction of market mechanisms into the countries that were not prepared for capitalism created uncontrollable levels of corruption and ultimately led to the emergence of oligarchic states where most people have few rights and few protections. Through arguments with a political scientist at an American university, I learned that the poverty that I grew up in was not an accident of history, but rather an orchestrated attempt to ensure that Russia and the former USSR could not come back to power. No matter how homesick I felt through most of my life, I have had no home to return to. All that was left of my home was the rubble from the US ambition to dominate the world.
As I sat in that courtroom, crying, I thought not of all the opportunities that this citizenship made possible for me, but of all the injustices that robbed me of a good life elsewhere.
The arrival of the blue passport with my face and my name in it sealed the deal. The passport made me realize that what died in me in that courtroom was the hope to belong and to have a place I could gladly call home. Perhaps exile is the only home I will ever have. But it also reminded me that being a US citizen means that now I have the right to take the position of critique and speak up against the injustices I see. Now, no one can tell me to go back home to my country when I voice concerns over the US foreign and domestic policies. This citizenship, along with the state of permanent exile, gives me the right to speak truth to power and to engage in the struggle for a more equal, just, and peaceful world to come.
