Podcast Response - Education

Through this trip, I am trying to learn what things really underlie our cultural differences and give us common ground. Though we are culturally different from one another, sometimes in a radical way, our common humanity ensures that we will be like one another in small and large ways.
Listening to the episode of This American Life, I was most affected by the segment we emphasized in class, actually, in which the Vowells' uncle tells them that he never got higher than a third grade education. In my studies and through my life experience, I have found that opinions on education are relatively constant, regardless of other cultural differences. The segment we listened to rammed that home for me.
The Vowells' uncle said in the segment that he had only gotten to the third grade. He could not go to school after that because he was needed for labor by his family, and necessity dictated his lack of a further education. He expressed sorrow at having not furthered his education at all, saying that he would have liked to keep going to school.
His thoughts brought back many memories, of studying educational history in various Southern communities, conversations with my family members about education in Romania, and experiencing education from the educator's perspective. History is filled with stories like the Vowells' uncle's. If we only look at upper class stereotypes of disadvantaged groups regarding education (uneducated, low brow, etc.), we fail to see the reality of what these communities actually thought about education. We can begin by looking at the Cherokee. The Cherokee, labeled savages by contemporary whites in the nineteenth century, showed incredible commitment and dedication to education. Cherokees had an incredible 98% literacy rate in the 1830s, when most whites living nearby were fully illiterate. After removal to modern day Oklahoma, one of the top priorities was higher education, and we see that the Cherokees built the first institution of higher learning west of the Mississippi and the seminaries. Allotment impoverished many Cherokee and took their educational opportunities away, but we can see from the segment that respect and support for education did not wane in the community.
If we look at early twentieth century North Carolina, specifically at white mill families and black communities, we can see the same opinion toward education. White mill families were paid close to starvation wages, so families could not afford to live on just the salaries of the parents. Children often went to work as soon as they could work the machines in the mills, resulting in a low level of education among mill families. However, records from the time period show that families sent their children to school for as long as they possibly financially could before they went to work in the mills. Records taken later during the Federal Writers' Project show that many families sacrificed themselves so their children could educate themselves even to an eighth grade level.
Black communities in early twentieth century North Carolina had extremely poor and inadequate educational facilities. Several private initiatives such as the Jeanes Fund, heavily supplemented by as much money as the communities could raise (often more money than donated by the funds), improved the educational facilities. Higher education in those communities improved the quality of life there as well.
In Romania, education was considered the one most important path to self actualization in an otherwise repressive communist society. Teachers were the most respected members of society, and education was seen as an honor and a privilege, and students could be sent home for disrupting the academic environment. The commitment to education is something that has led to an extremely high percentage of skilled workers in my parents' generation of Romanians.
When I was teaching a mini course at my old high school, I deal with a lot of grumbling and complaining, as many teachers do. However, it was clear that the students, mostly middle class whites, ultimately understood that some kind of education was the road to success in American society.
The support of education is something that is constant regardless of culture, race, and class. The definition of education is sometimes contested, and some people are quick to label those without a formal Ӏbook learnin'Ԁ education as uneducated or stupid. But really what education is is the acquirement of skills useful to a society. Every culture supports education.