Knowledge is power

Students with foreign parents understand value in education

February 17, 2017

Wheels turning \\ Having moved here from Vietnam when she was 6, Huong Huynh has taken an interest in art. Concentrating on painting her colorwheel during Mrs.Tigert’s fifth period Art I class, freshman Huong Huynh admits that while she is more focused on academics, she has a passion for fine arts.

Katherine Isbell, the Spanish I and II teacher, lived in Japan for 10 years, but after having her daughter and witnessing the deterioration of individuality in Japanese middle schools, Ms. Isbell returned back home to the U.S. in 2002.

The promise of quality education for children in America is what pushes immigrants around the world to migrate here.

Born and raised in America, Junior Afrida Tasnim, currently holds the number one rank in GPA for the Class of 2018. Immigrants from Bangladesh, Tasnim’s parents emphasize the importance of education in her life. Tasnim explains that her parents believe in her and her awareness while dealing with her grades.

“They trust me and they know I’m responsible for my grades,” Tasmin said. “It’s an expectation of me.”

While Bangladesh has a literacy rate of 61 percent, Tasnim makes sure that while she has the opportunity to receive education here in America, her grades stay above a 95 percent.

The literacy rate in Bangladesh may be above 50 percent, but poverty is still very common throughout the country.

Poverty is also a major issue in Ethiopia, with a literacy of 39 percent. Freshman Samara Huckvale is Ethiopian. Though she was born and raised in America, her mother, an immigrant, is very strict when it comes to her grades.

“As soon as a grade goes in, she’s on it,” Huckvale said. “If I even get a 98 percent, she’ll ask me where the other two percent went.”

Quality education is stressed in her family, and Huckvale understands the significance of education around the world.

“The American youth are so privileged that they don’t understand how hard it is to get here to America,” Huckvale said. “We under appreciate public education so much.”

Even from countries with a high literacy rate such as Vietnam, with a 90 percent literacy rate, freshman Huong Huynh, an immigrant herself, explains that there’s an expectation within herself to make her parents proud. Huynh moved to America at the age of 6 and has always set a high bar for her grades.

“They [my parents] left everything they’d ever known for me,” Huynh said. “That’s so important to me, to leave your comfort zone. And they did that all for me.”

Based on these students, there’s a sense of pressure to achieve greatness in an opportunistic America. Whether it’s to escape poverty, war, or to have a better opportunity, these students’ parents left their home country, for them.

“It makes me so mad,” Samara Huckvale said. “They [the American people] say ‘go back to your country’, but sometimes that’s not an option. I’m lucky to be educated here.”

Samara Huckvale, a future dermatologist, is currently in Health Science along with Huong Huynh, and they are both on the path to medical school, with Huynh looking towards anesthesiology. Afrida Tasnim is in College Club and always encourages students at Wylie East to participate along side her. These students aim to make the most of their free education and appreciate the privilege given to them.