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Old 06-09-2007, 04:41 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Goldsboro, North Carolina (Home of the Seymore Johnson AFB)
Posts: 85
Thumbs up Importance of Education and the American Dream

I am a second generation American. My grandparents were from India and later, Pakistan after the land was divided into 2 countries. The place where they lived became Pakistan. Both of my grandparents on my father's side were school teachers. There were 8 brothers and sisters all together. As you can probably already imagine that the salary of a teacher today in USA is pretty low and it would be quite difficult to raise a family on a single teacher's salary. Now think about raising 8 children on a teacher's salary in an undeveloped country, especially when the country was just born! (India had also screwed Pakistan pretty badly and never released the funds that it was to do so after the partition so Pakistan and its economy was in a very bad shape). My grandfather used to work as a security guard at the same school after his teaching job was over to try to make ends meet. They all lived in a small house made of mud bricks with a mud floor and no electricity and no running water and NO attached bathroom nor toilets.
My grandparents stressed education like crazy! My grandmother would literally get up at 4:00AM every morning and wake up all her kids and they would have to hit the books. (When my father tells me this, he even today gets teary-eyed) By 8:00AM every day the kids had already been studying for approximately 3.5-4 hours BEFORE going to school. After school, the kids would go straight home and take a half hour nap before doing their chores. Chores for my dad included feeding and milking the cows that also lived in the backyard. After the chores were done, the kids would study until evening and got only one hour to play outside and they had to wash up in the fresh water creek behind their lot and go to bed. Each child had only 2 pairs of clothes. One to wear to school and one to wear at home (washed everyday by my grandmother).
My father along with all of this brothers and sisters always made distinctions and got gold medals in schools and colleges.

My father's eldest brother became a doctor and the family had to sell off pretty much everything in order to buy him an airline ticket to America to further his training. During the training he was so poor that after pulling all night-er shifts in the hospital they could go home at 2:00PM the next day BUT he would stay until 7:00PM so he could get his free meal (dinner). Similarly the second sibling came to USA and worked hard.

It was during this time a friend of my grandfather's approached him and said to him that since now he has 2 kids in America that he should build a nice grand house. My grandfather replied, "Right now I am building my bricks of Gold" ,a reference to his children and their education. Eventually all 8 siblings came to the States; 7 of them became doctors and one became a businessman and brought their parents also to the States and cared and worshipped their parents until the day their parents died. Everything wish that came out of the parent's mouths was completed by their children immediately. Every wish was fulfilled.
Today all of my cousins and siblings including myself are very highly educated.

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