The White House Project

Jenny Choi, Intern

A leading department store made big news a couple of weeks ago when shoppers complained about a t-shirt for their little daughters and nieces to wear, which sported the words: “Too Pretty to Do Homework”. Social media exploded with angry comments and grassroots petitions to take it off the shelves, eventually leading the retail giant to publicly apologize.

The issue blew over quickly, but not before it reminded me of the turns and twists on how we view education: first, we valued it highly but didn’t provide it to girls, and now we are suggesting that girls take learning for granted, attaching scorn instead of value to it.

I run a club in my school that encourages women to step up and use the power of their education to do greater good for the community. Each member is linked with a student in an all-girls school in Arusha, Tanzania to exchange pen pal letters. The goal is to enlighten members about the condition of women’s education in Tanzania; in exchange, we encourage girls in Tanzania to push through with their education and eventually become change-makers in their communities.

In one letter, a Tanzanian girl described how blessed the students felt at her school every day because in most other areas of the country, girls are deprived of education from the minute they are born and married off as soon as possible. She wanted to be a teacher that would eventually start a butterfly effect in girls’ education in her community.

In comparison, our society feels luxurious, and our attitude obnoxious in the way that it has been encouraging young kids to treat education. Here, it’s something that everybody gets, so why not take it for granted?

Many women mistakenly blame men for the lack of their gender parity in society’s leadership positions. But men are no longer to blame. The striking contrast between the mindset that the young women in the Tanzanian school have and the stigma that learning carries among young kids here today shows me that the only thing to blame is the fact that few young people feel the obligation or the incentive to show their appreciation for education. If they did, wouldn’t they lead society towards the changes that they talk about?

The main goal shouldn’t be pulling up and encouraging “suppressed” female voices to levels of leadership. It should be instilling the confidence and sense of responsibility that will create sincere and earnest leaders, and soon enough, I’m certain we will have a strong foundation of fabulous women leaders for the future to use as a springboard.