Claiming An Education

2 Pages 599 Words

In Adrienne Rich’s commencement speech, “Claiming an Education”, Rich expresses her opinion on women’s education and how it should be. Throughout history, women have had little chance to even get a higher education. While this has changed, what is taught has not. In today’s society, it is necessary to change things that were previously unheard of. What is taught today is taught from a man’s point of view. Not just man in general however. Women and minorities are, for the most part, excluded from giving their point of view.

Women have always been encouraged to stay home, take care of the children, clean the house up etc. Times are now changing and women want to get a real and full education that explores all points of views, not just those of white men. According to Rich, it is men who write the texts we read, the lectures we hear, and the way our studies are divided into the categories that they are in. Women are beginning to want to work outside their homes. Only recently have they discovered that most of what they are taught is from a mans point of view. This point of view explores only a part of our world’s history. Different people have different experiences, and women’s experiences should make up more than half of those experiences. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

People of other races have already recognized that their experiences are often not accounted for in studies that are labeled human. This is unfortunate, because their experiences are as important as anyone else’s, and just as interesting. Their ideas of history, relationships, and experiences can be radically different from what is taught by white men. Rich explores this problem only briefly, but nonetheless it is just as important as her main issue. Rich did go on to say that not only education and studies are racist, but also the sciences.

It has only been within the past hundred years or so that education has be...