Educated

When I was young, I remembered my parents told me that I should study well in school, or I would end up on the street and sell lottery tickets. In Vietnam, we often associate people working on the street as “uneducated” and most parents want their children to have a brighter future by forcing them to study a lot. My family also has a teaching tradition, so my sister and I received a lot of pressure to do well in school. Luckily, both of us got accepted into good colleges after education.

When I was in high school, I went to a study abroad conference at a big hotel in my city. Most of the brochure were about flashy colleges, gorgeous students, fancy dining hall and the best of the world’s education. In my mind, I imagined that all American people were so beautiful and they all went to pretty colleges like the advertised ones. I would never think that the U.S can have people that are “uneducated”.

Not until I read “Educated” by Tara Westover.

In “Educated”, Tara wrote about her experience growing up in a rural family in Idaho. Her dad worked at a nearby junkyard scrapping metals, while her mom stayed at home making herbal recipes as well as midwifing other families in the area. The family didn’t believe in hospital, so Tara was born at home and didn’t have her birth certificate until later. She spent most of her childhood helping her dad with scrapping metals and her only source of knowledge was from some old books her mom kept for homeschooling.

The most amazing thing to me after reading the book is the power of education in transforming a person’s life, like Tara’s. If her brother didn’t encourage her to go to school and study, she would probably end up like her mother. Thanks to education, she realized how lunatic her dad was when she was young. Thanks to education, she broadened her mind and knowledge. But it’s also education that forces her to leave her family since they no longer share the same view with her, in which she bravely accepted.

Through Tara’s memoir, I realize how lucky I was to be educated. Some people may argue that you don’t need an education to be success in life, but I don’t agree with that. Yes, you may not need an education to be rich or wealthy, but by being educated, your mind will be transformed. Your point of view will change significantly the more knowledge you know, which is proved beautifully by Tara’s own experience.