Education & Trauma: Comments to Union County Board of Education

Whom does education serve?

It serves much more than individual students. It is a foundation for lives that comprise a community. Education gives employers a workforce to hire. Education raises the level of general skills, as well as abilities to learn and think. That makes better workers, innovators, problem-solvers, and entrepreneurs.

Giving children a good, safe base from which to learn is a boon for an entire society, not just the individual children in the system. It makes for a population who can read, understand instructions, learn new skills, and navigate a world of new technologies and innovations.

Trauma, however, changes how a child moves into and through an educational setting. We talk about trauma from things like death, illness, job loss, relocation, poverty, school shootings, and the like. We rarely address the trauma associated with violent immigration policies.

How do you listen to your teacher, when you are worried about where you will sleep?

How do you pay attention to your education when your classmate’ s uncle was picked up by ICE and no one knows where they are?

How important is reading when your cousin’s job-site was raided, and no one knows if he was picked up by ICE, lying dead somewhere, or in hiding?

What kind of emotional and psychological state is a child in when they or their parents may be targeted at school, in the school pick-up line, at a PTO event, or made a hostage by officials intent on locating a relative?

What is this school board doing on behalf of so many children and families under your care? The decisions you make affect the whole of the society our children see, understand, and learn from. Do you want them to become well-adjusted adults, or do you want them always looking over their shoulders in crisis mode?

Fred Rogers told us to look for the helpers.

Is that you? If not, aren’t you undercutting the social structure you are charged with healing, maintaining, and strengthening?



— ©Copyright 2025, Christopher B. Harbin 



http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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