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Donielle Tubioli Reading Response to "Claiming an Education" Back (to personal page)

One of the quotes in the reading that truly stood was when Adrienne Rich says, “…you cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education; you will do much better for yourselves as being here to claim one.” The writer makes a clear statement of what the verbs mean “to receive” versus what it means “to claim”. I never thought of education that way. When people would ask me why I am going to college, my response to them is always, “to receive a good education”, but really, we are not receiving it. It is not something that is given, taken possession of, or handed to us, in fact it is the opposite. By claiming our education we are doing more for it, we are asserting our right to be educated even if there are possible contradictions.

I believe that the text also gives a great insight on how much women are disregarded in society at times. The reading brings about the example of Douglass College and how it is actually a women’s university but is administered by men who are answerable to state legislature, who are also composed predominately by men. I also thought the reading brought up another important issue when it discussed how hat we learn in school and in college in history about views towards different things, theories or ideas, these are usually the words of males. I never really thought of it that way, but thinking about to history classes, sciences classes, or even psychology classes, the majority of the important people talked about were males. I find this very interesting. Not only is it males, but for the most part, it is white males. This could be regarded as racist. It is almost as if the ideas or views from women or non-white male individuals were not considered important.

I really feel that Adrienne Rich spoke real volumes when she talked about women and the responsibility to yourself. One of the quotes she said, “ It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short simply to avoid conflict and confrontation.” This sometimes happens to so many of us without even realizing. Sometime you may be confused in class or you may not agree with the way a professor or teacher is teaching, instead of confronting the teacher and asking to re-explain something, or instead of offering the teacher or professor some advice or your opinion on how to make the class more interesting, we sick back and take what is given to us. We are sometimes afraid of that confrontation or conflict that Rich talks about. We do not always speak up for ourselves, but to have responsibility to yourself, you must not be afraid of confrontation. Like Rich said in her writing, “the courage to be different.” Just because you do not want to be the only one asking for help, because you feel bad for disrupting or you do not want to feel “stupid”, you are actually hurting yourself in the long run.