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美國傳奇女學者:我曾經代表的美國夢已不複存在
加拿大和美國必讀 於2022-02-04
塔拉·韋斯特弗（《你當像鳥飛往你的山》的作者）在紐約時報發表文章，這位被人們當做美國夢代表的作家，反思了自己的人生曆程，並拒絕把自己的成功歸結於個人的努力和堅強的意誌，她將自己讀大學時的境遇和現在的貧困學生進行了比較，認為她成長的那個年代的社會環境更寬鬆，人們想要追求自己的夢想也更容易， 而這樣的美國夢，在美國如今高學貸、低補助的環境下已經不複存在了。
當我想起我大學的第一個學期時，我記得最清楚的是我身體的感受。我感到很累。淩晨3點40分的時候，鬧鍾響起，那尖叫聲仿佛鑽進我的腦子裏。然後是畫麵：鬧鍾漆黑的鍾麵閃耀著巨大的、橙色光芒的數字，我在半夢半醒間、下意識地按掉鬧鍾，當我從床上爬起來走向門口時，我的床離我越來越遠了。我不需要換衣服。我習慣在前一天晚上就穿好外套，因為3點40分響起的鬧鍾比3點30分的聽起來悅耳多了。
走到戶外，我在去往學校的人行道上蹣跚而行，我的臉頰感受到落基山脈帶來的冷意，這些人行道還要三個小時才會有人來撒化冰鹽。我要去的是工程樓，在那裏我要從短尼龍地毯上摳出口香糖，擦去黑板上奇怪的方程式，用去味的藍色凝膠洗刷馬桶。我在上午8點左右完成工作，然後接著去上課。
這是我在大一頭兩個月的例行工作。然後，由於我的房租不夠，我又找了第二份兼職，在學校食堂賣蔬菜沙拉和果凍。和我一起工作的女人也是一名新生，她負擔不起夥食計劃（即學校餐館的包月計劃）。
我不記得我們中的任何一個人提到過我們供應的食物太貴，我不記得當我把圍裙掛在儲物櫃裏，從背包裏拿出我自己的午餐，也就是一根蛋白質棒和一包拉麵（在當地雜貨店買的10美分）時，我感到憤怒和委屈。我也不記得自己清洗同學們使用的盤子或廁所時感到被羞辱。我當時對不平等和貧困的所有看法可以用極其簡單的方式來概括：好累。
我在2018年寫的回憶錄《你當像鳥飛往你的山》（Educated）中提到了這些經曆，這本書成了暢銷書，令我感到驚訝。我的故事是一個極端：我出生在愛達荷州的山區，父母是摩門教徒，他們不讓我上學，在楊百翰大學上學之前，我從未踏入過教室。我於2008年畢業，並贏得了劍橋大學的獎學金，在那裏我獲得了博士學位。
當你把你的生活公之於眾時，會發生一件奇怪的事情。人們開始解讀你的傳記，然後向你解釋他們認為其中的故事意味著什麽。在簽售會和采訪中，經常有人告訴我，我的故事令人振奮，我是堅韌不拔的典範，是“鼓舞人心的人”。這樣的評價我很受用，所以我謝謝你們。但每隔一段時間，就會有人更進一步，說一些我無法回應的話。他們說，“你是美國夢活生生的證據，美國對任何人來說，都有無限的可能。”
但我是嗎？我的故事是這個意思嗎？
除了疲憊以外，我對貧窮印象最深的是：一種無處不在的權衡感。你當然要修最多的學分，因為學費很貴；你當然要做第二份工作，還要加班，然後做第三個副業，耙樹葉、修草坪或鏟雪。我唯一問過的問題是他們什麽時候結賬。
我的生活是由錢決定的，就像淩晨3點40分響起的鬧鍾一樣，我上夜班就是因為工資會多一美元，每小時6.35美元而不是5.35美元。我的室友們一直把音樂放到半夜，所以一般來說，我一晚上隻能睡三個小時，但是這個不重要；我在講課時打瞌睡，或者我整個冬天都在咳嗽並患上了原因不明的鼻竇炎，這也不重要。重要的是我每小時多掙一美元！ 數字是直截了當的，也是決定性的。
我的大學理想在大二時戛然而止。我牙疼得厲害，原因是神經腐爛，我需要做根管治療，這需要1600美元。我決定退學。我的計劃是搭車去拉斯維加斯，我哥哥在那裏做長途卡車司機，並在他的拖車對麵的In-N-Out漢堡連鎖店找了份工作。
然後，我教會的一位領袖把我拉到一邊，堅持讓我申請佩爾助學金（Pell Grant），這是一個幫助貧困孩子支付大學學費的聯邦計劃。幾天後，一張4000美元的支票寄來了。我從來沒有見過這麽多錢，這個數字簡直讓我無法理解。
我一個星期都沒有去兌現它，因為我不知道擁有這樣一筆錢會對我產生什麽影響。然後我的牙實在是太痛了，促使我去了一趟銀行。我做了根管治療。我第一次為我的課程購買了所需的教科書。我還有了剩餘的錢，超過一千美元，所以我辭去了食堂的工作，把夜班換成了白班。我不再在課堂上睡覺了，咳嗽好了，鼻竇炎也好了。
兌現支票的那天使我又成了一名學生。在這一天，我的思維從癡迷地追蹤我的銀行賬戶餘額，甚至精確到每一毛錢，轉向癡迷地追蹤我的課程作業。這算不上一筆財富，但它給了我安全感，有了安全感，我就可以自由滿足自己的生活所需。我喜歡做什麽，思考什麽？我擅長的是什麽？我開始尋找和研究必讀書目以外的書籍；我選修了非必讀課程，原因很簡單，我對它們感興趣，而且我有時間。
從那一刻起，我所做的每一個決定都是那張支票的作用。在那些絕望的歲月裏，幾千美元足以改變我的整個人生軌跡。它為我打開了一個新的世界。它讓我第一次體驗到了金錢的強大優勢（我現在體會更深了），金錢的魔力就是可以讓你考慮金錢之外的其他事情。這就是錢的作用。它使你的思想得到解放，從生存到生活。
以人們希望的方式講述我的故事是很誘人的。我很想成為英雄，把我的成就歸功於努力和堅定的意誌。但如果我把自我放在一邊，我知道情況並非如此。我在2004年上大學，就讀於楊百翰大學，這是一所由摩門教會提供大量補貼的私立大學。學費是每學期1640美元。那是在住房危機之前，當時在一個破舊的公寓裏找到一個合租房是有可能的，每月隻需190美元。這些數字意味著，從實際情況來看，我有可能通過半工半讀來完成大學學業。
暑假期間，我可以通過每小時5.35美元的超市結賬區的裝袋工作賺到足夠的學費。那時，我兩個學期所需的近3000美元似乎很驚人，讓我不得不把“您是用紙袋還是塑料袋？”這句話說了不知多少遍。但打工付學費還是可能實現的。即使家裏沒錢支持，沒有文化優勢，這依然是有可能的，隻要你真的想做。
對於今天背景貧窮的孩子來說，我所走的教育之路已經不複存在。因為數字已經變得無法想象。
如果你的父母是卡車司機、農民、清潔工或出租車司機（他們也許是我們國家最勤勞的人），你就無法取得成功。根據美國教育部的數據，在過去30年裏，即使在調整了通貨膨脹之後，四年製大學的學費依然增加了一倍多。高等教育政策研究所2019年的一份報告告訴我們，在一些州立旗艦學校（不是花哨的私立學校，就是普通的四年製公立大學），低收入學生需要支付完全超過他們承受範圍的8萬美元。即使在楊百翰大學，全國最實惠的四年製大學之一，自我畢業以來，學費也幾乎翻了一番。
佩爾助學金是我第一次嚐到經濟保障的滋味。現在，由於學費和住房成本的上升，即使是全額補助也完全不夠用。當這個計劃在50年前建立時，最高的補助金涵蓋了四年製公立大學79%的費用。今天，它隻覆蓋了29%。這是不夠的。那筆補助金為我提供的東西——安全、安心、第一次考慮我想要什麽樣的生活的空間，現在它無法再提供了。
對於今天的貧困兒童，我們提出了一個不可能實現的方案。我們一邊高聲呼籲他們必須獲得一個大學學位，因為沒有學位，他們就沒有希望在全球化的經濟中競爭，另一方麵我們雖然嘴上這麽說，但實際上我們自己也懷疑這個建議。
我們知道，我們正在要求他們把自己埋在債務中，而今後他們能夠得到什麽樣的工作，或者他們需要多長時間來償還貸款，都是非常不確定的。我們知道這一點，他們也知道這一點。對他們來說，美國夢已經成為一種嘲弄。也許，我的故事不能證明了美國夢的持久性，相反，它證明了美國夢的不穩定性，甚至是它的逝去。
解決方案有很多。我們可以恢複對公立大學的資助，堅持用公共事業的方式來運作學校，而不是把它們當成收取高價的企業。我們可以增加佩爾助學金並改革學生債務。如果我們有足夠的決心，我們可以解決近幾十年來破壞社會和政治生活的每一個事實和方麵的極度不平等問題。
就我而言，我將以不同的方式來講述我自己的故事，拋棄那個時髦的古老寓言，即把任何成功都歸結為勇氣和勤奮。我將承認，坦率地說，那個時代更容易，環境也更好。我們的機構也更好。也許這就是我的故事的意義所在。當我兌現那張支票時，我學到了一件事：人不可能永遠堅韌不拔，但一個國家可以。
GUEST ESSAY
I Am Not Proof of the American Dream
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/opinion/tara-westover-educated-student-debt.html
By Tara Westover
Ms. Westover is the author of the memoir “Educated.”
When I think of my first semester of college, the memory comes to me as a physical sensation. I feel tired. There is the siren-screech of an alarm sounding at 3:40 in the morning. I feel it in my teeth. Then images: the orange glow of the jumbo numbers in pitch black, the instinctual, semiconscious tapping of the button, the gradual shrinking of my bed as I climb out of it and move toward the door. I do not change my clothes. It was my habit to dress for the day the night before, because an alarm blaring at 3:40 really does sound much better than an alarm blaring at 3:30.
Outside I feel the Rocky Mountain winter on my cheeks as I begin the scramble to campus on sidewalks that will not be salted for another three hours. I’m heading for the engineering building, where I will pick gum out of short nylon carpet, wipe strange equations from dusty chalkboards, and scour the interior of toilet bowls with an odorless blue gel. I will finish around 8 a.m., then head to class.
This was my routine for the first two months of my freshman year. Then, because I was short on rent, I added a second job, serving coleslaw and Jell-O in the cafeteria. The woman who worked alongside me was also a freshman who could not afford the meal plan. I don’t recall either of us mentioning the fact that we were serving food we could not afford to eat; I don’t recall feeling angry as I hooked my apron in my locker and reached into my backpack for my own lunch, a protein bar and pack of ramen noodles (10 cents at my local grocery store). I also don’t recall feeling humiliated or disrespected to be cleaning plates or toilets used by my classmates. The full complexity of my opinion on inequality and poverty then could have been summed up with utter simplicity: I was tired.
I wrote about these and other experiences in my 2018 memoir, “Educated,” which surprised me by becoming a best seller. My story was one of extremes: born in the mountains of Idaho to Mormon parents who kept me out of school, I had never set foot in a classroom before my first semester of college at Brigham Young University. I graduated in 2008 and won a scholarship to the University of Cambridge, where I earned a Ph.D.
A curious thing happens when you offer up your life for public consumption: People start to interpret your biography, to explain to you what they think it means. At book signings, in interviews, I’m often told that my story is uplifting, that I am a model of resilience, an “inspiration.” Which is a nice thing to be told, so I say thank you. But every so often someone takes it a bit further, and says something to which I do not have a response. I’m told, “You are living proof of the American dream, that absolutely anything is possible for anybody.”
But am I? Is that what the story means?
After being tired, here’s what I remember most about being poor: a pervasive sense of costly trade-offs. Of course you had to take the maximum number of credits, because tuition was expensive; of course you had to pick up that second job, that extra shift, that third side hustle raking leaves or mowing lawns or shoveling snow. The only question I ever asked was how soon could they pay.
The architecture of my life was defined by money, meaning its absence, right down to the alarm blaring at 3:40 a.m. The night shift paid a dollar more, $6.35 an hour instead of $5.35. Never mind that my roommates blasted music until midnight, so that on a typical night, I got around three hours of sleep; never mind that I was dozing through my lectures, or that I spent the entire winter with a raspy cough and string of unexplained sinus infections. It was a dollar more! The math was straightforward and decisive.
My college ambitions nearly came to an abrupt end in my sophomore year. Blinding pain in my lower jaw turned out to be a rotting nerve. I needed a root canal and $1,600 to pay for it. I decided to drop out. My plan was to hitch a ride to Las Vegas, where my brother was working as a long-haul trucker, and to get a job working at the In-N-Out Burger across the street from his trailer.
Then, a leader at my church pulled me aside and insisted that I apply for a Pell Grant, a federal program that helps poor kids pay for college. Days later a check arrived in the mail for $4,000. I had never seen that much money, could not wrap my brain around the amount. I didn’t cash it for a week, afraid of what possession of such a sum might do to me. Then the throbbing in my jaw motivated me to take a trip to the bank. I got the root canal. For the first time, I purchased the required textbooks for my classes. There was money left over, more than a thousand dollars, so I quit the cafeteria and swapped the night for the day shift. I stopped sleeping through my classes; the cough dried up, the infections cleared.
The day I cashed that check is the day I became a student. It’s the day the current of my thoughts shifted from obsessively tracking the balance of my bank account, down to the dime, to obsessively tracking my coursework. It was an experience not of wealth but of security, and with security, the freedom to ask questions about what I wanted from my life. What did I enjoy doing, or thinking about? What was I good at? I started seeking out and studying books outside the required reading; I took courses that were not required, for the simple reason I was interested in them, and I had the time.
Every decision I made from that moment on was a function of that check. In those desperate years a few thousand dollars was enough to alter the whole course of my life. It contained a universe. It allowed me to experience for the first time what I now know to be the most powerful advantage of money, which is the ability to think of things besides money. That’s what money does. It frees your mind for living.
It’s tempting to tell my story in the way people want me to. I would love to be the hero, and say that it’s all about hard work and determination, the white-knuckled triumph of the human will. But if I put my ego aside, I know that’s not the case. I entered college in 2004. I attended Brigham Young University, a private college heavily subsidized by the Mormon Church. Tuition was $1,640 a semester. This was before the housing crisis, when it was possible to find a shared room in a shabby apartment for just $190 a month. What these numbers meant, in real terms, was that it was possible for me to work my way through college.
Tara Westover on graduation day at Brigham Young University.
I could make enough to cover tuition by bagging groceries for $5.35 an hour during the summers. Back then, the nearly $3,000 I needed for two semesters seemed staggering, and it necessitated me saying the words “Paper or plastic?” an unthinkable number of times. But it was possible. Without family money, without cultural advantages. It was a thing that could be done, if only just, if you really wanted it.
For kids today from poorer backgrounds, the path I took through education no longer exists. The numbers are not imaginable — not if your parents are truckers or farmers or cleaners or cabdrivers, maybe the hardest-working people in our country. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in the last three decades, tuition at four-year colleges has more than doubled, even after you adjust for inflation. A 2019 report by the Institute for Higher Education Policy tells us that at some state flagship schools (not fancy private schools, just regular four-year public universities), low-income students are asked to cover some $80,000 beyond what they can afford. Even at B.Y.U., one of the most affordable four-year colleges in the country, tuition has nearly doubled since I graduated.
A Pell Grant was my first taste of financial security. Now even a full grant would be wholly inadequate, because of the rising costs of tuition and housing. When the program was established 50 years ago, the largest grant covered 79 percent of the costs to attend a four-year public college. Today it covers just 29 percent. It’s not enough. What that grant offered me — security, peace of mind, a space in which to consider, for the first time, what sort of life I wanted — it no longer offers.
To poor kids today, we present a no-win scenario. We shout shrilly that they must get a college degree, because without one they can’t hope to compete in the globalized economy, but even as we say it, we doubt our own advice. We know that we are asking them to bury themselves in debt at a moment when it is very uncertain what kind of job they will be able to get or how long it will take them to repay the loans. We know it, and they know it. For them, the American dream has become a taunt. Perhaps my story is proof not of the persistence of the American dream but of its precarity, even its absence.
The solutions are multitude. We could restore funding to public universities and insist that they operate as public utilities, rather than businesses charging the highest price. We could increase Pell grants and reform student debt. If we were more ambitious, we could tackle the supreme inequality that, in recent decades, has disfigured every fact and facet of social and political life.
For my part, I will begin by telling my own story differently — by discarding that fashionable old fable that reduces any tale of success to one of grit and diligence. I will admit that, to be frank, it was an easier time, and things were better. Our institutions were better. Perhaps that is what the story is about, inasmuch as it is about anything. There is the one thing I learned when I cashed that check: that people cannot always be resilient, but a country can.
Tara Westover is the author of the memoir “Educated.”
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