I just finished teaching an exciting survey course on engineering to a group of 9th and 10th graders in Los Angeles. This was an 18-week, voluntary, after-school program, so the participants were clearly motivated. They were bussed in to a central site from a dozen schools around the city. It was a dream job, and the kids were great.
Each day as I looked around the classroom and took attendance, I was struck by the diversity of the names of the students. We had a Ngoc and a Himachal, an Ammar and a Harjas, a Bao and a Parham, a Courvoisier and a Keyon. Of course we also had a Joanna and a Tyler and a Christina, too. This is not your father’s America. I couldn’t help but think back on my 10th grade classes growing up decades ago in the Midwest – my classmates were named George and Susan, Christopher and Linda, Maribeth and Rita and Patrick. Honestly, it was about as homogeneous a community as you could find anywhere in the US, and typical of many suburban American towns in the mid-20th century. That’s the America Republicans want to return to, where racial and ethnic minorities are invisible, where no one looks or acts different and no one rocks the boat. It's not gonna happen, and that's a good thing.
The America represented by my classroom is the soon-to-be future America that terrifies conservatives - an America where everybody gets a chance. The children of first- and second-generation immigrants studying engineering in the aerospace capital of the US, voluntarily, on their own time, with passion. Many of the students asked if they could have more to do. Some wanted to know where they could buy the electronics project kits that we used for the electrical engineering segments. They usually wanted to know how each topic we discussed related to some aspect of their everyday lives – the computers and phones and roads and bridges they use each day, the buildings and automobiles and rockets they live with and dream about.
Education is the future - we are training the next generation of leaders and citizens today. I have no doubt that all these kids will do just fine in their future careers. They were bright, they have motivated families, they have role models and opportunities that many poor kids in communities around the country – I’m looking at you, red America – will never have. And this diversity will make Los Angeles a better place in the future. I am just happy I could be part of it. I wish the same for all of you in your communities around the world - let's work to make it happen.