Learning from the Struggles of the Past

August 18th, 2008 at 03:20pm Larry Messing

I was listening to a story this morning on NPR that included comments from Julia Wright, daughter of well-known African-American author Richard Wright (writer of Native Son). She spoke of how, as a youth, she read her father’s autobiography Black Boy while eating caramels. She learned how her father received a single orange for Christmas one year and he savored it slowly as he ate it.

She immediately spit her caramels out.

A lot of times – probably most of the time – we don’t think about those that have had to work a lot harder than us to accomplish things we take for granted – eating an orange; voting for president; getting an education.

For so many young people, going to school is a necessary evil. It is something to be suffered through on the way to reaching the “real world.”

My children are the same way. My oldest wants to be a chef, but will have to work hard to get finished with high school and then culinary school. I went to college and got my degree in journalism. My mother took care of me as a baby while my father worked his way through school so that they could have a good life for their family. Both sets of my grandparents worked long hours in factories so that their children wouldn’t have to. My great-grand parents included hardworking Midwest sharecroppers and new immigrants from Poland who sweated each day just to make sure there was food on the table at the end.

We must realize the struggles of our past to value the gifts of our future. So much work has been done to get us where we are today, who would want to let them down?

Entry Filed under: workforce readinesss, Junior Achievement, Economic education, Financial literacy