Half The Sky Summary

In the reading “Half the Sky” “Investing in Education,” Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn discusses a thirteen-year-old girl, Dai Manju, a thin girl with black hair and shorter than an average American thirteen-year-old who lives in the Dabie Mountains of central China. The family has no electricity, running water, or any form of transportation. Manju’s parents were illiterate and they did not see any reason for a girl to be educated, especially for $13 per year so she was forced to drop out of school after the fifth grade. The family could use the money for groceries. Although, Dai Manju had no pencils or papers, she had been the star pupil in her class, and she yearned to continue her education. Kristof the article about Dai Manju, and a generous reader in New York was inspired by the story and wired $10,000 to pay for her tuition. The reader, though, only sent $100 because the bank made a mistake, which thankfully ended up helping Manju and other young girls in the school. Manju graduated from elementary school, high school and accounting school. She obtained a good-paying job in Guangdong Province as an accountant for local factories and helped her parents build a large new house. After that, Manju married a skilled worker, an expert in molding, and she had …show more content…
But the benefits are difficult to measure statistically. The authors offer the counterexample of Kerala, which is one of the best-educated places in rural India and it hasn’t grown economically. Also, it mentions that Lebanon is competing with religious cults, and Saudi Arabia is a very conservative culture. The authors, Kristof and WuDunn, they regard these examples as exceptions but stress that “education isn’t always a panacea” (170). Building schools aren’t always the answer to increase education access since teachers don’t always fulfill their