Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Sold blog- second post Sierra Stephens ESPIRIT
Education is an empowering aspect in anyone's life, and giving this opportunity to all should be a top priority. Education is much more than just learning useless facts, it is a way to feel worth something, it is a way to be able to respect yourself. After long days of reading then secretly hiding Harish's book whenever he came back from school, Lakshimi was caught in the act. After Harish offers to help Lakshimi learn how to read this new language, she considers her emotional state, "And then he is gone. Leaving me to consider how long it has been since a tomorrow meant anything to me" (163). This coincidental act is a simple thing that saved Lakshimi's sanity. Education helped Lakshimi along the road of re-gaining her happiness and ability to be excited and feel useful and not just a toy for men to play with anymore. It is astounding how 4.1 million American students are attending 9th grade right now, yet we all value school as a privilege. It is astonishing that we are privileged enough to even go to school, while girls in third world countries are being taken away to work for their families at young ages, never having an education as young women. It is important for us to think less about how awful it is to be waking up at six every morning to go to school five times a week, but to be thankful for what we are given because billions of girls will never have that opportunity.
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Not only is education empowering, but it can be fascinating as well. Here in Marin, many of us take our education for granted; we attend an outstandingly academic and unique public school, when you compare it to schools in the rest of the world. In Nepal, education is difficult, because schools lack the materials to teach in a creative way, parents are too poor to pay for the cost of better education, and children are not nourished enough, and thus don't have a long attention span to learn well, according to the Rural Education Development Center Nepal. At least Lakshmi attended a school, even if it wasn't the best one. Now she craves that simple education again, so much that she steals a young boy's story book feed that hunger for education again. "I do not understand the words inside, and the pictures are queer and otherworldly. But at least for a few minutes, I pretend I am in school with Gita and my soft, moonfaced teacher, and I am the number one girl in class again"(pg.155). While most of us at Drake High School are so excited when it's a weekend, or we're on break, Lakshmi aches for her schooling to resume. She craves that education so much that she uses mind control, pretending that she is there, with her friends, at school. It is devastating to compare the opposite extremes, and Lakshmi's fascination makes me wonder if I would do the same, if I were forced to stop attending school.
ReplyDeleteThe poverty in these countries certainly contributes to the lack of education. For many families including Lakshmi's even basic supplies such as pencils cannot be afforded or are not valued enough by these families. In rural parts of third world countries it is not uncommon for a cycle to form in which people don't receive an education when they are young so when they are older they don't believe that their kids need one. In the book Lakshmi was so very touched when she was given the pencil from Harish. this was not because she was so overwhelmed about the pencil but that she was overwhelmed by what the pencil represented. To her the pencil represented education.
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