A great American Educator and advocate for civil right whom you probably never heard of, Mary McLeod Bethune, knew that education was key to improving the lives of her family and those in her community. She spent her life fighting for them to have access to schools and when they didn’t she created her own school. Why do you think education is so important?
Source: Mary McLeod Bethune: Fighting for Equality in the Classroom and Beyond, By Untold History, https://youtu.be/d2vvaqRDMvc
More info here: History Chicks: Episode 223: Mary McLeod Bethune, Part One & Episode 224: Mary McLeod Bethune, Part Two
If you’ve never heard of Mary McLeod Bethune I would highly suggest checking out the two episode on her life and story from the podcast History Chicks (Episode 223: Mary McLeod Bethune, Part One & Episode 224: Mary McLeod Bethune, Part Two). The struggles that she faced and overcame and the level of her influence is staggering. Out of all of her siblings she was chosen by her family to get an education and she recognized that it was an investment by her family and so she didn’t just get her education and then leave them. But from the beginning she brought what she learned back to those making the sacrifices and spent time teaching them all of the things she’d learned that day. She showed what a giving spirit and supportive family she’d grown up in.
I wished I’d followed that pattern when I went away to university and would have shared with those back home. But I have a feeling that I wasn’t mature enough to share with my folks and/or younger siblings in a way that wouldn’t have ended up being confrontational. The problem would probably have been that my very conservative Catholic mom wouldn’t have appreciated or understood what I was learning or experiencing at Loyola Marymount as a Religious Studies major. My dad appreciated but didn’t really understand the whole college experience to begin with. And things would have been even worse had I attempted to “share” once I switched schools and began working toward my bachelors degree in Biblical Studies at a fundamentalist Protestant university. They recognized the importance of getting a college degree in the abstract but I needed to grow up… a lot… before I could imagine doing what Ms. Bethune did, bringing her education back to her family.
My grandparents’ education ended in elementary school. My parents’ education ended in high school. When I was growing up in the 1960s & 70s there was a strong expectation that we’d all go to and graduate from college. Much later, when I became a college professor, it was pretty clear that everyone felt like you needed a college degree if you wanted to be successful. But it’s not that formulaic (just look at all of the billionaires who have no earned college degree…). An education opens up opportunities or possibilities that you might not have otherwise. For me, it represented the opportunity to grow up and become the person I would become who looked at the world and lived in the world very differently than my parents but learned to appreciate their experiences and journey. I think my father had his life-expanding experience going into the military after high school and my grandfather when he brought his young family to California from Mexico over a hundred years ago. Education enabled that growth and change for me. What does education mean to you or to your life’s journey?