A Little Bit of Homework.

For one of my classes I have to read Amartya Sen's book Development as Freedom. I don't recommend it. Sen is some super genius economist who works at Harvard and has won the Nobel Prize in economics and the book is really complex and confusing. We're supposed to read different sections of the book, develop a question about the reading and answer it. You don't even have to actually come to a conclusion; it's more about the thought process and attempting to wrestle with the content of the book. I felt like the wrestling I did during the last section was really valuable, so I've copied my paper below for you all to enjoy. Just in case you didn't have enough homework.

In this section of Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen writes extensively about what poverty means to individuals living in their own countries, and how location and median income of that area affect the quality of life those individuals can have. The theory, which seems to be logical, is that even if a person has a greater income than many others in the world, if it is significantly less than the average in their area, that person will probably suffer because the standard and cost of living are higher and they can’t keep up. If this is true, then is emigration based on hope for economic increase or better healthcare or something of the like actually advantageous?

In my personal life experience, through novels and historical trends and the typical American perspective, I have always rather thought that America was the best place to live. Not “best” as in no other place is good, beautiful, or rich in culture and experiences, but “best” as in I have never been excessively hungry, I have a place to sleep, I receive a very good compulsory education, I can drink any water that I want and not worry about getting sick. Even though I know it is a fallacy, deep in my mind I still think that the best way to improve people’s lives is to bring them to America, the land of opportunity! Therefore, tasks like teaching people English are of the utmost importance because their ultimate end goal is to be in America someday, where life is better. This probably sounds really stupid to anyone reading it, but I’m just being honest. Even I take this perspective with a grain of salt; it isn’t as though I have a dream to bring every poor, sick, or starving person to Maine and think that they will all flourish there. But it has always seemed to me that America is the best place to live.

After reading these chapters, as well as having a conversation with someone experienced with refugee work in America, I have started to seriously overhaul this line of thought. If it is true that more important to quality of life and happiness is an individual or family’s economic standing compared with those surrounding them, rather than the world as a whole, then it is most certainly not in a person or family’s best interest to immigrate to America to start life over. Chances are they don’t know anyone in their new area, and apparently even refugees are only given governmental assistance for eight months upon arrival in America. If someone doesn’t speak English, they may have a difficult time finding work, especially within an eight-month time frame. Furthermore, refugees are given less than one thousand dollars with which to start life over completely new. In the scheme of American finances that amount is virtually nothing to survive on. When these people come to America, they are leaving behind a place where they are understood and probably feel comfortable for the hope that they will have a “better” life. But because they are economically disadvantaged by American standards, they will be financially hurting just as they were in their home country and possibly even worse off. This leads me to believe that America isn’t the best solution for everyone. It seems like an obvious answer, but it really did take all that thinking through to come to the conclusion that America isn’t the answer. America is not and never was the Promised Land.

The realization that America isn’t the answer to every third world country’s problems led me to reconsider a few other ideas that I had previously taken for granted. At my internship, on of the potential opportunities for American interns in the future was to teach English lessons. It seemed like such a great idea, something that I am able to do relatively easily and that could be a really valuable investment of my time into the community. But after realizing that America is not the final goal of these people and shouldn’t be their goal, it was a little less clear why the people should all learn English. Yes, English is spoken in this part of India a lot, and it would certainly be beneficial to the overall economy to have a common language, but why does it have to be English? The language of their oppressors for so many year shouldn’t be the language everyone is required to learn to function in society when they already know the language of their cultural heritage. I have come to doubt and wonder whether the skills I, as an outsider, possess can really be that beneficial to the communities here. Help needs to come from within, as World Vision has already realized. Their plan is to work from within the culture, with offices right in the areas they want to improve, employing locals who know what is going on and what can be done, to try to get the underprivileged educated and get them the resources they need to have the same opportunities to fill potential as those around them in India.