Reposted with permission from the American Federation of Teachers, 
http://www.aft.org
Where We Stand
By Albert Shanker, President
The American Federation of Teachers
A School for Iqbal
Two years ago, the seventh-grade students at Broad Meadows Middle School in
Quincy, Mass., met a famous person who changed their lives. The celebrity
was Iqbal Masih, the 12-year-old Pakistani children's rights activist and
former bonded laborer.
Iqbal, who was in the U.S. to receive a prestigious human rights award, had
an incredible story to tell. When he was four years old, he had been sold
to a rugmaker for the equivalent of $12. He escaped when he was ten and was
now working to free other children who were still enslaved. Iqbal had often
been chained to his loom and even beaten, but he had not come halfway
around the world just to talk about his own suffering. Iqbal told the
Quincy students that his ambition was to be a lawyer and the Abraham
Lincoln of his country who would put an end to the practice of bonded child
labor. Next to freeing children, Iqbal said, the most important thing was
making sure they got an education. One of the Quincy students, Amy Papile,
remembered that Iqbal "had a blue pen and a carpet tool in his hands. He
held the carpet tool up and said, 'This is not the tool children should
have.'" He told the seventh graders that he dreamed of founding a school in
his home village for children like himself.
Iqbal Masih seems to have made a powerful connection with the students at
Broad Meadows. This was partly because of the contrast between their
comfortable lives and the unimaginable hardship of his. Amanda Loos, one of
the students, put it this way: "He was so tiny. He had a scar on his
eyebrow, where he was hit by an overseer.... The whole time I was with him,
I kept thinking we grew up with luxuries, as spoiled brats. And they were
working for my luxuries." But the students were apparently also struck by
the conviction of a boy exactly their age that he could change an unjust
system. So they decided to start a letter-writing campaign to let other
American students know about child labor.
Iqbal was murdered--shot dead while riding his bicycle--just a few months
after he visited the U.S. This moved the students at Broad Meadows to take
on a much bigger project. They decided to raise money to build the school
Iqbal had dreamed of. To do this, they sent out thousands of letters,
fliers, and faxes and set up a web site (called "A Bullet Can't Kill a
Dream") in which they told Iqbal's story. They asked people they contacted
to contribute $12--a number they chose because Iqbal was 12 years old when
he died and because he was sold to the rugmaker for $12. Originally, they
hoped to raise $5000 to build a one-room school, but by September 15, 1996,
The Kids' Campaign to Build a School for Iqbal had received $123,200 from
students and others in 50 states and 20 countries. The campaign will
continue until the end of 1996.
The money will go to establish the Iqbal Masih Education Center, a school
for 200 poor Pakistani children who have either been bonded laborers or are
at risk of being sold. It will also provide money for 50 Pakistani families
to buy back their children from bondage, and it will form part of a future
endowment for the school. The Kids' Campaign hopes to dedicate the school
on April 16, 1997, the second anniversary of Iqbal Masih's death.
To make the campaign a success, Ron Adams, a teacher and the students'
advisor, says the kids worked incredibly hard and took all kinds of
initiatives that we don't usually expect of 12- and 13-year-olds. They came
to school early, stayed late, and worked through vacations. They sent out
thousands of letters, including a personal response to every person or
organization that wrote them, and, when they found they would be able to
build the school, they wrote to 300 organizations in Pakistan, asking them
to submit proposals. Their extraordinary success is worthy of the boy who
inspired it, but in many respects these kids are average teenagers--and
that is important.
We Americans tend to expect very little of our children. We expect them to
be spoiled and cynical. We allow them to be precocious in some ways and
babies in others. Then we criticize them for being shallow and selfish. The
students from Quincy should make us think again. They were not moved by
Iqbal because he had the glamor of a rock singer or sports hero or movie
star--malnutrition had stunted his growth and his back was crooked from
bending over the loom. They recognized his heroism and responded to that.
Our young people want to do more; they want us to expect more of them. The
Kids' Campaign to Build a School for Iqbal shows what they can do.
Contributions can be sent to A School for Iqbal Masih Fund, c/o The
Hibernia Savings Bank, 731 Hancock St., Quincy, MA 02170. The web site
address is http://www.digitalrag.com/mirror/iqbal.html
Chuck Beams
Fidonet - 1:2608/70
cbeams@future.dreamscape.com
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* UniQWK #5290* "I drank WHAT!?" - Socrates
--- Maximus 2.01wb
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