Reading Blog 6

Wait. Is this fucking play about my family?

Hello my dears!

As I was reading the essay “Public Education” by Mariategui I was constantly drawing parallels between my immediate family and the broader Hispanic perceptions on education. I found this essay contextualized observations I’ve had about my family. 

I’ve always had an awareness that education was viewed as more important with my first or second generation friends than with my friends who’s families had been in Canada for ages, but I never quite felt like just immigrant status was what made education important. Getting a white collar degree was the standard for my Dad's family prior to him moving to Canada. At 17, my Dad declared he wanted to be a chef. My Grandma shut that down real quick and he was to choose a “real career” and go to university. Initially reluctantly, he went to university to become an architect because it was one of the few professions his siblings had left for him. They already had a doctor, an economist, a lawyer, an engineer, and a marine biologist, and my Dad says it was a bit of an unspoken rule that everyone had to pick something different than their older siblings. 

In a North American context, I wouldn’t consider any of these degrees bad, but they certainly aren’t going to propel one to the 1%. Getting just a degree isn’t enough to compete with the likes of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or my native Albertan oil industry. To become traditionally successful in late-stage capitalism you have to be industrious and follow “the grind” of corporate America. Being self-made like Kylie Jenner is the ultimate achievement, and college dropouts are frequently celebrated. These attitudes on education can potentially be traced to America's adoption of early capitalism that highly values production.

In Spain and Colombia however, I feel like education is treated as the primary means of social mobility (not just a means, like it is in North America). As education was historically primarily accessible to an upper class, to serve the upper class, being able to access higher education is a means to enter the upper class. The idea of my father working in the trades after all that effort my single-mother grandmother spent on private school was just unfathomable. It didn’t matter that both professions have pretty bad financial prospects, being an architect was more respectable and thus the obvious choice. 

Class mobility seems more possible in North America where class is measured by monetary means (yes, there’s the whole old vs new money debate but it’s usually settled within a generation or two), whereas in Latin America class appears more fixed and dependent on family lineage and social circles. In racialized people and those less well off in Hispanic places, I’ve observed a hustle for education, potentially because it offers access to the social spaces of the upper class. My grandmother on my Mom’s side is a campesina (although she’ll deny it heavily to her grave). For her, getting a technical education as a secretary was a primary means of social mobility because she was eventually able to work in proximity to my grandfather and marry him.

Education in Latin America I feel can also be a means to maintain social status. My Dad laments how the architecture building shared space with the posh girls that studied “textiles industriales” (fashion studies) just because a degree was seen as a fashionable accessory. For my Mom who had a privileged upbringing, her anthropology undergrad was just perceived as a fun time before she got married. Similarly, my aunt’s fine arts degree was seen as useless for not being academic enough but encouraged because at least she was doing something besides partying. I feel there’s almost a celebration in the more “useless” a degree is because it demonstrates a privilege for education. 

The entrenched classist nature of education in Latin America that Mariategui describes I see reflected in my Colombian family. They found it unfathomable that I attended public school, regardless of how amazing Alberta public education is. 

This reading helped me to gain more context for explaining certain patterns I see in my family. I don’t agree with many of their views, and would actually say they’re quite medieval, but it was cool to see how they are products of their culture, just as I’m a product of my Canadian upbringing. Growing up in Canada, I’ve felt historically disconnected from my heritage. One of my primary motivations for attending this seminar was to learn more about Latin America without a familial intrusion. This reading helped to place my family as symptomatic within the larger narrative of Spain and Latin America. Despite us living a century after the educational reforms of Peru, it’s interesting to observe the repercussions in attitudes throughout generations. I’m left pondering, to what extent can an academic lens sharpen the familiar narrative, and a familial lens sharpen the academic narrative? 

I hope you guys enjoyed the family lore :)