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美国传奇女学者:我曾经代表的美国梦已不复存在
加拿大和美国必读 于2022-02-04
塔拉·韦斯特弗（《你当像鸟飞往你的山》的作者）在纽约时报发表文章，这位被人们当做美国梦代表的作家，反思了自己的人生历程，并拒绝把自己的成功归结于个人的努力和坚强的意志，她将自己读大学时的境遇和现在的贫困学生进行了比较，认为她成长的那个年代的社会环境更宽松，人们想要追求自己的梦想也更容易， 而这样的美国梦，在美国如今高学贷、低补助的环境下已经不复存在了。
当我想起我大学的第一个学期时，我记得最清楚的是我身体的感受。我感到很累。凌晨3点40分的时候，闹钟响起，那尖叫声仿佛钻进我的脑子里。然后是画面：闹钟漆黑的钟面闪耀着巨大的、橙色光芒的数字，我在半梦半醒间、下意识地按掉闹钟，当我从床上爬起来走向门口时，我的床离我越来越远了。我不需要换衣服。我习惯在前一天晚上就穿好外套，因为3点40分响起的闹钟比3点30分的听起来悦耳多了。
走到户外，我在去往学校的人行道上蹒跚而行，我的脸颊感受到落基山脉带来的冷意，这些人行道还要三个小时才会有人来撒化冰盐。我要去的是工程楼，在那里我要从短尼龙地毯上抠出口香糖，擦去黑板上奇怪的方程式，用去味的蓝色凝胶洗刷马桶。我在上午8点左右完成工作，然后接着去上课。
这是我在大一头两个月的例行工作。然后，由于我的房租不够，我又找了第二份兼职，在学校食堂卖蔬菜沙拉和果冻。和我一起工作的女人也是一名新生，她负担不起伙食计划（即学校餐馆的包月计划）。
我不记得我们中的任何一个人提到过我们供应的食物太贵，我不记得当我把围裙挂在储物柜里，从背包里拿出我自己的午餐，也就是一根蛋白质棒和一包拉面（在当地杂货店买的10美分）时，我感到愤怒和委屈。我也不记得自己清洗同学们使用的盘子或厕所时感到被羞辱。我当时对不平等和贫困的所有看法可以用极其简单的方式来概括：好累。
我在2018年写的回忆录《你当像鸟飞往你的山》（Educated）中提到了这些经历，这本书成了畅销书，令我感到惊讶。我的故事是一个极端：我出生在爱达荷州的山区，父母是摩门教徒，他们不让我上学，在杨百翰大学上学之前，我从未踏入过教室。我于2008年毕业，并赢得了剑桥大学的奖学金，在那里我获得了博士学位。
当你把你的生活公之于众时，会发生一件奇怪的事情。人们开始解读你的传记，然后向你解释他们认为其中的故事意味着什么。在签售会和采访中，经常有人告诉我，我的故事令人振奋，我是坚韧不拔的典范，是“鼓舞人心的人”。这样的评价我很受用，所以我谢谢你们。但每隔一段时间，就会有人更进一步，说一些我无法回应的话。他们说，“你是美国梦活生生的证据，美国对任何人来说，都有无限的可能。”
但我是吗？我的故事是这个意思吗？
除了疲惫以外，我对贫穷印象最深的是：一种无处不在的权衡感。你当然要修最多的学分，因为学费很贵；你当然要做第二份工作，还要加班，然后做第三个副业，耙树叶、修草坪或铲雪。我唯一问过的问题是他们什么时候结账。
我的生活是由钱决定的，就像凌晨3点40分响起的闹钟一样，我上夜班就是因为工资会多一美元，每小时6.35美元而不是5.35美元。我的室友们一直把音乐放到半夜，所以一般来说，我一晚上只能睡三个小时，但是这个不重要；我在讲课时打瞌睡，或者我整个冬天都在咳嗽并患上了原因不明的鼻窦炎，这也不重要。重要的是我每小时多挣一美元！ 数字是直截了当的，也是决定性的。
我的大学理想在大二时戛然而止。我牙疼得厉害，原因是神经腐烂，我需要做根管治疗，这需要1600美元。我决定退学。我的计划是搭车去拉斯维加斯，我哥哥在那里做长途卡车司机，并在他的拖车对面的In-N-Out汉堡连锁店找了份工作。
然后，我教会的一位领袖把我拉到一边，坚持让我申请佩尔助学金（Pell Grant），这是一个帮助贫困孩子支付大学学费的联邦计划。几天后，一张4000美元的支票寄来了。我从来没有见过这么多钱，这个数字简直让我无法理解。
我一个星期都没有去兑现它，因为我不知道拥有这样一笔钱会对我产生什么影响。然后我的牙实在是太痛了，促使我去了一趟银行。我做了根管治疗。我第一次为我的课程购买了所需的教科书。我还有了剩余的钱，超过一千美元，所以我辞去了食堂的工作，把夜班换成了白班。我不再在课堂上睡觉了，咳嗽好了，鼻窦炎也好了。
兑现支票的那天使我又成了一名学生。在这一天，我的思维从痴迷地追踪我的银行账户余额，甚至精确到每一毛钱，转向痴迷地追踪我的课程作业。这算不上一笔财富，但它给了我安全感，有了安全感，我就可以自由满足自己的生活所需。我喜欢做什么，思考什么？我擅长的是什么？我开始寻找和研究必读书目以外的书籍；我选修了非必读课程，原因很简单，我对它们感兴趣，而且我有时间。
从那一刻起，我所做的每一个决定都是那张支票的作用。在那些绝望的岁月里，几千美元足以改变我的整个人生轨迹。它为我打开了一个新的世界。它让我第一次体验到了金钱的强大优势（我现在体会更深了），金钱的魔力就是可以让你考虑金钱之外的其他事情。这就是钱的作用。它使你的思想得到解放，从生存到生活。
以人们希望的方式讲述我的故事是很诱人的。我很想成为英雄，把我的成就归功于努力和坚定的意志。但如果我把自我放在一边，我知道情况并非如此。我在2004年上大学，就读于杨百翰大学，这是一所由摩门教会提供大量补贴的私立大学。学费是每学期1640美元。那是在住房危机之前，当时在一个破旧的公寓里找到一个合租房是有可能的，每月只需190美元。这些数字意味着，从实际情况来看，我有可能通过半工半读来完成大学学业。
暑假期间，我可以通过每小时5.35美元的超市结账区的装袋工作赚到足够的学费。那时，我两个学期所需的近3000美元似乎很惊人，让我不得不把“您是用纸袋还是塑料袋？”这句话说了不知多少遍。但打工付学费还是可能实现的。即使家里没钱支持，没有文化优势，这依然是有可能的，只要你真的想做。
对于今天背景贫穷的孩子来说，我所走的教育之路已经不复存在。因为数字已经变得无法想象。
如果你的父母是卡车司机、农民、清洁工或出租车司机（他们也许是我们国家最勤劳的人），你就无法取得成功。根据美国教育部的数据，在过去30年里，即使在调整了通货膨胀之后，四年制大学的学费依然增加了一倍多。高等教育政策研究所2019年的一份报告告诉我们，在一些州立旗舰学校（不是花哨的私立学校，就是普通的四年制公立大学），低收入学生需要支付完全超过他们承受范围的8万美元。即使在杨百翰大学，全国最实惠的四年制大学之一，自我毕业以来，学费也几乎翻了一番。
佩尔助学金是我第一次尝到经济保障的滋味。现在，由于学费和住房成本的上升，即使是全额补助也完全不够用。当这个计划在50年前建立时，最高的补助金涵盖了四年制公立大学79%的费用。今天，它只覆盖了29%。这是不够的。那笔补助金为我提供的东西——安全、安心、第一次考虑我想要什么样的生活的空间，现在它无法再提供了。
对于今天的贫困儿童，我们提出了一个不可能实现的方案。我们一边高声呼吁他们必须获得一个大学学位，因为没有学位，他们就没有希望在全球化的经济中竞争，另一方面我们虽然嘴上这么说，但实际上我们自己也怀疑这个建议。
我们知道，我们正在要求他们把自己埋在债务中，而今后他们能够得到什么样的工作，或者他们需要多长时间来偿还贷款，都是非常不确定的。我们知道这一点，他们也知道这一点。对他们来说，美国梦已经成为一种嘲弄。也许，我的故事不能证明了美国梦的持久性，相反，它证明了美国梦的不稳定性，甚至是它的逝去。
解决方案有很多。我们可以恢复对公立大学的资助，坚持用公共事业的方式来运作学校，而不是把它们当成收取高价的企业。我们可以增加佩尔助学金并改革学生债务。如果我们有足够的决心，我们可以解决近几十年来破坏社会和政治生活的每一个事实和方面的极度不平等问题。
就我而言，我将以不同的方式来讲述我自己的故事，抛弃那个时髦的古老寓言，即把任何成功都归结为勇气和勤奋。我将承认，坦率地说，那个时代更容易，环境也更好。我们的机构也更好。也许这就是我的故事的意义所在。当我兑现那张支票时，我学到了一件事：人不可能永远坚韧不拔，但一个国家可以。
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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