Recently two visiting Sacred Heart nuns from the Congo and Mexico who serve in Central Administration in Rome visited the Catholic Academy of Bridgeport on the St. Augustine campus in Bridgeport. They sought to understand the educational mission of the Society of the Sacred Heart worldwide and more closely in the tri-state area.
A young fourth-grader who had just left a refugee camp in the Congo to live with relatives in Bridgeport chatted away happily in Swahili with the sister from the Congo. Two seventh-graders spoke in English and Spanish with the sister from Mexico. It broke my heart.
They asked the students, “What are you afraid of?” The seventh-grade boy held a reflective pause then spoke. “I am afraid of getting shot.”
“My parents won’t let me go out much from the house because I can get shot. I love coming to this school because I am safe here. All the teachers know me and take care of me.”
We know from surveying our parents that one of the key reasons for coming to the Catholic Academy of Bridgeport is that their children are safe. And by “safe” they do not just mean physical safety, but the safety that comes from being love. Of being known by name.
Returning from Bridgeport to our community in Harlem where the visitors were staying, we reflected on the statement “I am afraid of getting shot.” The visitors commented that in another school in lower Fairfield County, when students were asked the same question, the answer was “Global Warming.” There is no judgment intended. But how can it be that schools 40 minutes apart in one of the finest states in the country, we can have such disparity, such structures of classism, race, separation and uneven economic realities that a child has to worry about being shot?
There is no blame game here. Not the fault of the police or the government or illegal guns or dysfunctional families, drugs, dropouts or addictions. Together we are all co-responsible for the inequity created by ZIP codes. We are not haunted by and kept up at night by the inequality of it all. Let us just remember that young boy: “I am afraid of getting shot.”
Sister Joan Magnetti is former executive director of the Catholic Academy of Bridgeport and former Headmistress of Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich. Originally appeared in the Connecticut Post.
