Is Girl Education A Natural Choice For My Life?

“Something that I never had in life, something that you have but are taking for granted, I won't stand for it.” Game controller in hand, I gulped hard, with sweat rolling down my head. My eyes pointed directly downward, not daring to look up as my mother gave “the talk.” My mother’s words echo in my head. Having lost her father during high school, she was denied her right to higher education. She married at a young age, moved to America, and gave birth to me. The first born, the carrier of the American Dream. We were what one would expect from an immigrant Indian family; working hard, valuing education, and hoping for a better tomorrow. As my parents worked hard to sustain our family, I strived to excel in school, motivated by their hardship.

See growing up in a large family like mines education was very important. Despite we didn’t have many to graduate from college put a lot of pressure on me. See my grandparents didn’t go to high school or college. So, they were real hard on their kids about go to school and graduate. So, made my parents hard on my brother and me about our education. My brother and me will be the first in our large family to graduate from college. My mom was real hard on me because she didn’t want me to go to in be like her. She had

Education is the key to achievement and paves the way to success. In the “Author’s Introduction” of her 1792 treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft states that the education of women has been “neglected” and the instruction they receive is “a false system of education” focused on trivial matters. Because women have not been given educational opportunities on a par with men, she laments that women are viewed as inferior and “a frivolous sex” who can only rise in the world through marriage (Wollstonecraft). Women and men should be treated equally and given equal opportunities: one’s ability, not one’s sex, must be the deciding force in all aspects of life.

Coming from a war-torn country, I was informed by the concepts of social injustice and gender inequality at a young age. Whether it was witnessing my girl-friend forced to dress up as a boy or witnessing many of my classmates forced to drop out of middle-school by their parents, I was constantly reminded of what it meant to be a teenager, a girl, in a country full of restrictions and limited opportunities. Nonetheless, I was fortunate to be raised in a household with an activist father that has dedicated his life in improving the quality of education in Afghanistan and a mother that wanted her daughters to pursue the education she could not. The values and beliefs they imposed on me gave me a clear idea of what I wanted to pursue in the future.

Over the past couple of decades’ girls have begun to surpass boys in academics. Girls have higher high school and college graduation rates, enrollment in Advance Placement (AP) classes, selected for valedictorians and salutatorians, and there are more female applicants being accepted to professional programs, such as physicians and surgeons and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Throughout history, men had access to better education than women. The educating of women was deemed unnecessary by parents, elders, educators, and other members of the community. The traditional role for women consisted of homemaking and child rearing, neither required any type of formal education. Clearly, skills to support these traditional roles were important and often acquired from the more senior women of the extended family and the

I am the product of a lineage of men and women who walked to school barefoot. Times were hard, but education played a pivotal role in whether the burdens of the present would be ones’ they would bear in the future. Education is more than sitting in a classroom; It involves learning from those who are older than us and I learned from my lineage. The elders have always said “What an old man sees sitting down, the young man cannot see standing up,” This speaks of the wisdom of those who exceed us in age. They carry many more years of learning than I have.

Young women not receiving an education hurt not just themselves, but also their families and the societies they live in. Girls suffer because they miss out on opportunities to socialize, acquire knowledge, and gain the skills and sense of autonomy needed to improve their personal well-being and their lot in life. Child marriage is also another reason for parents to take their daughters out of school. Parents expect their daughters to get married and have kids before the age of 18, therefore, young women don’t have the chance to complete

A mother and a father are in a difficult position when they’re raising a child with limited opportunities. When the number of children begins to increase, the sense of responsibility can knock down the little ambition a person has within. One can either choose to fight harder than before, or wait for an opportunity to come knocking on their door. When I was born, my parents did not have the means to support a growing family. I was the driving force that propelled my parents to use every ounce of energy to give my brother, sister and I the resources we would need to become successful. I was given both a stable financial and moral foundation to always give my greatest effort in my education. I kept that mentality throughout my entire educational career and I was able to graduate at the top of my class.

The universal truth that education is empowering is evident in the documentary “Solar Mamas” by Mona Eldaief and Jehane Noujaim through effective presentation of the Feminist Literary theory and Marxist Theory. Firstly, the universal truth that education is empowering is displayed through the idea that education gives opportunities and unlocks potential. In a world where knowledge is power, any kind of education, formal or informal, is essential. With a good education, an individual is presented with countless opportunities, and will be made aware of his or her capacity to develop into something great. This is presented through a quote from the documentary “Solar Mamas”;

As a woman getting education in my home country is, sadly, very difficult. Many societies look at an educated women as being an oddity. A women has no role outside the home and kitchen and it is this very idea that can cripple society. My mother ingrained in me as a child to put my education first. She always said that what stood between us and absolute

As Harriet Beecher Stowe once said, “Women are the real architects of society”. Without women, none of us would be in this world today and it is about time our society values women with more respect, which they deserve. With that said our society has indeed come along way especially since the time Mary Wollstonecraft first wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”. Some of these changes have been shown or brought to the public’s attention within the educational realm.

“Educating Women Who Make a Difference,” the mission statement of my high school served as influential factor behind my success. My education was always my first priority and I was in an environment where that mindset was encouraged. It was a strict academic domain tailored around different subjects and courses that forced students to work hard in order to achieve academic success. Outside academics there were also programs and other robust extracurricular activities that allowed me to explore and expand on endless opportunities.

This statement had a deep rooted impact on my attitude since my childhood. The quest for knowledge has always been a passion for me so when I am faced with myriad of choices for my career,I am determined to pursue research in the field of my interest and for this reason I choose to pursue MS in Computer Engineering at your esteemed university.Since childhood I was influenced by my mother who works in Doordarshan, India’s first Television network as an engineer. I was fascinated by how visual media, message is relayed to the entire nation with the help of technology and computers which were nascent but burgeoning. It was this fascination coupled with my childhood knowledge about basic computer operations that made me to venture into vastness of computers and electronics and aspired me to pursue a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering major in my under graduation. My strong inclination towards Maths and Science supplemented by high performance in academics during my school years facilitated me to obtain an admission into

One huge factor that made me who I am today was my family, who have always encouraged my academic aspirations. Their assistance and encouragement began even before my formal schooling began. First of all, despite the fact that both of my parents spend most of their days working at their local business, they still made time to read to me. Though it may not appear as a crucial piece of my life, their act of introducing the wonder within the pages of books was the foundation, not only to my love of reading, but also my academic successes in the future. This, in conjunction with my parents’ emphasis on education, made me like learning and school; as a result, I wanted to do well in school. In addition, during my years spent in elementary school, my parents would help me out on homework I didn’t understand and encouraged me to ask the teachers questions if I needed help. Thus, without my parents, I would not be where I am today since they helped lay the foundation for my future successes.

I would like to start with the very famous saying; ‘If you educate a boy, you are educating one person. But when you educate a girl, you educate the whole family’. In my case, where I am much more of a feminist in my own ways, I strongly believe that every child has a right to education, and when I say every child, this includes every girl child as well.