This summer, Cruz-Bustamante who is a New Haven native and lives in Fair Haven, got an introduction to the ivory tower known as Yale University. They described learning about and seeing firsthand the educational investment divide between systems like NHPS and Yale.
For the past five weeks, Cruz-Bustamante has attended three-hour courses at Yale four times a week.
The classes helped them to regain their love for learning, feel curious again, and explore their intellectual abilities. They thanked their professors for this.
Despite the intensity of the courses, Cruz-Bustamante said they are again engaged in learning because of the class focuses on pedagogy, politics, Marxism, and cultural analysis.
It is in classes like “Education and Empire” that Cruz-Bustamante is learning vocabulary for describing the history of “how schooling is used as tool of social engineering and to put students in different economic classes,” they said.
In the class they’ve also been introduced to books like “Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School,” which Cruz-Bustamante said reminded them of New Haven.
“Education is treated as a simple and mechanical enterprise,” to regulate students rather than to spark creativity and passionate in learners Cruz-Bustamante said.
They continued that the structures of schooling are to mainly enhance capitalism. “I can’t focus on a career, job, trade or skill that will only serve to future legitimize and strengthen systems that rule us and that are pushing us to the brink of death,” Cruz-Bustamante said.
While in the Yale program, Cruz-Bustamante said they’ve been given the chance to explore new corners of New Haven and have access to buildings that are often restricted only to the Yale community.
They’ve found favorite hangout spots like Yale’s Bass Library, Architecture School, and the Humanities Quadrangle.
They described also feeling “survivorship guilt” while in the program because of the many resources available to students at Yale that are not accessible to other New Haveners.