My Education Compared To Elementary School

My education has been more technologically advanced in comparison to my parents. My father never completed high school, and my mother dropped out of college. Aside from my mother, my father and I were born in the United States. On the other hand, my mom was born in raised in a very small city in central Mexico. Every time my parent’s and I go to Mexico it’s a tradition to visit the ranch where my mother and her family grew up. A twenty-minute drive from the ranch is where my mother, and every other child within that area, went to elementary school. During this time my mother’s family couldn’t afford a car, along with everyone else in that poor area of Mexico, therefore my mother and the other children would have to walk over half an hour to …show more content…
From afar the building looked small, but the closer one got to the structure the more cramped it would be seen as. This elementary school was only made of gray, handmade cement bricks. It was stabilized on an uplifted platform, and was only three walls and a roof. Not only did this school contain only three walls and a roof, but it also didn’t have a door. My mother’s elementary school resembled a stage to some degree. It was open and facing a large, empty space which is where the students would sit. All the children that attended this school, including my mother, would sit in a field of grass whiling paying attention to their teacher who stood on what looked like a stage. There would be no desks, no textbooks per student, no electronics, and not even electricity. Today, all schools are expected to necessities such as heat, water, food, classrooms, and all appliances that are needed to provide a solid form of education for children. During my mothers time, all she had was a three walled brick room with nothing in …show more content…
My first thought when I saw that school was, “what kind of education could you receive from an almost broken down stone structure”, but my mother was still able to go to college for 3 years before dropping out to support her family. Currently, I have a whole new perspective on the beginnings of my mother’s education. My mother had done what she needed to do in order to receive some form of education, and her past situation currently makes me think of Rose’s work called “What College Can Mean to the Other America”. Rose asserts at one point within his work that, “A certificate or degree alone will not automatically lift them out of hard times – there is a bit of magic-bullet thinking in these college initiatives-but getting a decent basic education could make a significant different in their lives” (Rose, paragraph 5). This excerpt from Rose’s work clearly states that any form of education can help benefit someone’s life in some way. All forms of education should be respected, because it shows a person’s initiative to further their knowledge in hope for a better life. With that in mind, this is exactly what my mother had done in order to receive some sort of education. Even though she may have been too young during her time to understand that this was beneficial for her future, my grandparents knew that this was a necessity for her upbringing. In conclusion, the quote taken from Rose’s