My mother and father were around me the majority of my time and helped instill the values they thought were important for a child to learn. Education was always an important value in my household because my father believed it was the gateway to a better life. According to Christine Kim of The Heritage, “the solution to improving educa¬tional outcomes begins at home, by strengthening marriage and promoting stable family formation and parental involvement “(Kim, 2008). I believe my parents hold the value of education so strongly because their parents did not hold them to a higher standard in education. During the 1960’s most young adults graduated from high school and never thought about any education beyond that point. An estimated 5 million people were enrolled in some sort of secondary education in 1960, as opposed to 20 million in 2011 (Census, 2013). Over the course of 50 years, my parents has seen the impact that college has had on children and how much more successful a child could be with earning some sort of degree. I would never have valued school as much as I do now without the help from my …show more content…
I will never forget the times I spent as a child at church camp, smelling the fresh trees, or seeing the bright orange glow of the campfire. Church was my sanctuary to get a feeling of why I was on earth and what my purpose was while I was here. I could always confide in my preacher, he was like a grandfather with no relation. He seemed to know everything and could answer any question that I could throw at him. He was a very intelligent man, I knew this not only by his religious sermons but in the extracurricular actives he partook in. He would always play chess, which was an instant hit with my father; so to say I looked up to him was an understatement. Having such a profound relationship with the preacher and the church was very important to me growing up. I wanted to spend as much time with my family as possible, so attending church gave me more time to enjoy their company. I also held the fact that my father’s entire side of his family attended that church, so it was a win-win situation. Religion and a family to share that with, nothing could have been better for a child at my age. In a Study done by Social Science Research, “religion has been shown to enhance the parent-child bond for both the mother and the father” (Research, 2007). Having a great church and a great family to share that with definitely gave me the best childhood I could have ever dreamt