Thread by @ooana

I grew up with an American father and a Hungarian immigrant mother. My mom always had very strong feelings about the importance of education. I’m starting to realize where this fire she felt about it came from. A 🧵

On previous tweets I’ve said that my mother’s father was arrested and died in one of Stalin’s gulags. The system that punished him, removed them from their home and saw to it that his wealth was “redistributed” also saw to his children.

As an undesirable my grandfather’s children were also given a social note. This meant that their studies were not treated as other students would be. Their privilege had to be checked.

My uncle, 5 years older than my mother would have to stop his education as early as the 6th grade. His father, my grandfather, you must understand spoke 15 languages. Educating the “bourgeois” was not to be tolerated. Education was about “liberation” you see. How liberating. 😒

Liberation means creating the New Man. See man is too “selfish” “greedy” “oppressive” etc etc etc in a world that focuses solely on the mythology of all suffering being the result of one ruling class taking advantage of a victim class.

Without the absolute destruction of this paradigm there is no possibility of anything but oppression. Well, so says the class running the gulag, carrying the guns, demanding a boy and a girl be punished for the “sins” of their father.

Sins which apparently include funding and building hospitals while denouncing the 20th centuries predilection for using war as a path to utopia. But I digress. Back to my mother.

Despite these impediments and with the help of a heroic man who helped move the family from town to town so that before anyone could yank them out it of school because they discovered who they were they’d be gone.

The did come with a price. My mother and uncle began dancing in this man’s touring circus. This man knew our family because my grandfather had raised the Lipizzaner horses that were a featured act.

Despite waking up at 4 to clean barns and train, go to school then rehearse afterwards or perform my mother and uncle both did very well, managing to even graduate early. My mother also managed to learn 8 (now 9) languages.

See, not losing that sense of responsibility and pride in learning was a huge part of what helped my mom survive this system. It’s part of what allowed her to say then and later to me “I was born equal.”

So...yeah. My mom was a hard ass about my education. But she was the hardest not only on me, but on herself. She refused to allow herself to compromise when what I was being taught was mediocre, false or presented mediocrely.

I was in 3rd grade traveling to London with my mom and dad (my mother’s passion for traveling was something she insisted I be exposed to as much as possible from a young age) over Thanksgiving.

They had asked to allow me to have a few days off of school for this trip. The teacher agreed under the condition that I did an assignment. Agreed. On the flight there my mother told me to do my assignment. Agreed. I wrote something on a piece of paper, and said I was finished.

My mother gave me a look I can only describe as one that any child of Hungarian / Slavic parents knows...only the eyes do the talking, *and you listen.* I explained “I’m done. Really” and I handed her the paper. She asked me what was the assignment?

I told her. “Write a report about how the British celebrate Thanksgiving.” On the paper was written two words.

They don’t.

That was that. Mom’s eyes moved off me & zeroed in on the problem. 4th grade I started private school. It was hard. I was not use to having such a rigorous or demanding workload. It was *really* hard. It didn’t take long before I realized I was learning more than just subjects.

I was learning how to learn and to value learning. I liked the hard. Okay well, most of the time. 😆

Most importantly...that I could really love learning, not just “get it done.” Most of all I got to see that when I really had no idea how I was going to get from looking at something with no confidence or even understanding or even a notion where to begin....?

I could trust that the process almost always ended with confidence and understanding.

That process or its value didn’t mean my grades were always “the best”, it meant that I began expecting a certain caliber and challenge and demand on me and I was aware they we pay for our education. I demanded from my education too. That’s the value of fair trade.

Did all students end up feeling this way? Of course not. Were some families just wanting to assure some advantage or just signaling to their social group? I’m sure.

But that wasn’t many of us, that wasn’t my family. That wasn’t me. My family was not rich, not by a long shot. Here again is simply an expression of choice.

The middle and high schools in my town paid for by tax dollars was far less diverse than the private school I graduated from. Per student? The cost of education at the time was more at the public school; a common reality rarely talked about in our debates over school choice.

In college, more than once I went to a department head and demanded I have the option to switch to a class taught by a more skilled member of the faculty.

When I once set a curve with a C, I wasn’t pleased. I demanded something be done so that we were learning, my A meant nothing if it was a C when the “challenged” party wasn’t me.

Maybe that made me a pain in the ass. We need more pains in the asses over things that really matter in my (not so) humble opinion. And maybe that’s why I find myself recoiling at the state of our education system.

Doesn’t it seem an absurd amount or money and time is spent encouraging meek acceptance of the falsehood that public education is somehow a moral obligation and choice is an immoral hazard to it and the domain only of “private” institutions?

Maybe they only people who need to “check their privilege” are the people who believe there is anything at all moral about this lesson;

learning how to & that we do *love* learning isn't as important as how the people tasked as the experts on learning feel about how, what & where you or I are permitted to learn.

Thats a real abuse of a privilege & a sanctioned oppression by a protected class upon the less powerful. How

*were far less (edit button🤦🏼‍♀️)

ironic.