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The author, Tara Westerfer, is a mountain girl who never entered the classroom before she was seventeen, but she obtained a doctorate in history from Cambridge University through self-study. She comes from a family that few people can imagine. Don't go to school, don't see a doctor, and don't allow them to have their own voice. Until she fled the mountain and opened another world.
/kloc-Before the age of 0/7, Tara lived in the mountains and never went to school because her father refused modern education. When Tara/Kloc-was 0/7 years old, she was admitted to the university with her brother's encouragement, and then she seemed to get a doctorate from Cambridge University all the way.
Every family will give their children two gifts. One is common sense, which is our most basic understanding of the world; The second is affection, which is the most basic connection between us and the world. If the family is not normal, these two gifts will become curses.
Tara grew up in a very abnormal family. It seems that Tara's father suddenly decided to live a life contrary to modern society one day. He no longer lets the whole family go to the hospital to see a doctor, nor does he let his children go to school. My brother and sister dropped out of school and worked in the waste factory where my father worked; Tara has only received family education since she was a child, and even has no birth certificate. They also hoarded food to prepare for the end of the world imagined by their father.
Why is Tara's family so strange? Two reasons can be summarized from the book: first, because their family believes in Mormonism, this belief itself has some extreme and paranoid ideas; But Tara thinks that the more important reason is that his father suffers from bipolar disorder, which amplifies the extremely paranoid thoughts in his father's mind.
Luckily, Tara has a brother named Taylor. He went to school when his parents were normal. Although he dropped out of school, he insisted on self-study and was admitted to the university. With Taylor's encouragement, Tara was admitted to the university by self-study.
Education has given Tara a brand-new view of her family's world view. She re-examined the cruelty of her father, the cowardice of her mother and the violence of her brother. She bravely resisted the opposition and obstacles of her family to her education, and everything grew up in the trauma of education. To liberate ourselves from spiritual slavery, only we can emancipate our minds. As Tara said: You can call this brand-new self in many ways: transformation, metamorphosis, hypocrisy and betrayal, which I call education.
Although Tara's experience is unique, the question reflected in her story is universal: what does education mean? How should girls pursue themselves? How to balance self-will and family responsibilities? By writing her own story, Tara found the answer. Education means self-creation, encouraging her to open up the infinite possibilities of life and accept different voices. She once lived under her father's strict discipline, and it was by actively seeking education that she discovered her true self. With education, the world is no longer black and white, but colorful.
Education means gaining different perspectives and understanding different people, experiences and history. Get an education, but don't let your education become arrogant. Education should be the expansion of thoughts, the deepening of empathy and the broadening of horizons. You shouldn't make your prejudice more stubborn. If people are educated, they should become less sure, not more sure. They should listen more and talk less, be passionate about differences and love ideas different from them.
This story will make you change your traditional view of "education" and appreciate every attempt to receive education again. But this is by no means a "stormy Cambridge road", nor is it a successful training manual for girls. In the face of her achievements, Tara is just an understatement in the book. She said she didn't want to be the embodiment of the inspiring American dream. Education has changed her life, but it has also drawn a deep rift between her and her family that is difficult to repair. She is no longer a child raised by her father, but her father is still the father who raised her.
After all, family is a place in our hearts where it is difficult to distinguish right from wrong. Sometimes it warms you, and sometimes it stings you. Despite different ideas and positions, love always exists and cannot be abandoned. Tara said in Oprah's program: You can love someone, but still choose to say goodbye to him; You can miss someone, but still be glad that he is not in your life.
Although we don't have an unfortunate family like Tara, each of us will be bound by various constraints in life to some extent: when filling in the college entrance examination, we are disturbed by our families: we want to go to other provinces and object, and we want to choose a relative favorite major, but we also object; I'm graduating soon. In order to find a job, you want to take the postgraduate entrance examination. The family said, "What do you want to learn? Find a class near home. " If you want to try to start a business, not only your parents will object, but also a large number of friends around you will object; Especially in the third and fourth tier cities, if you attend an off-campus training, it will be regarded as an alternative;
These chains surround us all the time. In fact, the most terrible thing is not the voice of opposition, but the decadent and solidified ideas: girls should behave as teachers or go home to take the civil service exam; I am an elder, so everything I say is right and I don't accept any refutation; Society is like this, the class is getting more and more solidified, and it is useless for you to work hard; As we all know, the times we live in are the best. College entrance examination, entrepreneurial wave, everyone from the media, these are stairs, see if you want to climb. These ideas are terrible, because if we stay in such a sound environment for too long, we will be easily assimilated and really turn these words into reality. Reality is a shackle. You want to break free, only to find that only by cutting off the past and flying higher can you fly to your mountain. Therefore, if you want not to be assimilated, you must escape first. The higher you fly, the farther you run.
May you and I both fly to the mountain we want to go like birds.