Learning the History of the Unacknowledged by Suzie

Learning the History of the Unacknowledged by Suzie - December 2020 Scholarship Essay

There has been a hole in my education throughout these past 13 years. A hole that a well-intentioned teacher will occasionally attempt to patch with a fleeting mention of Emilia Earhart’s bravery, or a small picture of Rosie the Riveter on a World War II slideshow during history class. Despite these honorable, but slightly feeble attempts, the gap in my education remains, and it turns out I am almost entirely ignorant when it comes to the topic of historical women. My educational New Year’s resolution is to learn about the unacknowledged women who have changed the world.

I can list the founding fathers and probably recite a fun fact about each, yet I cannot name a single suffragist involved in the women’s movement in the early 20th century. It is not as though women did not exist before the 2000s, but our educational system would make it seem that it is only within the past couple of decades that women have done anything notable. They have always been an integral part of society, and there is a multitude of women who deserve the same acknowledgment and revere in the classroom that we give to so many men.

Time magazine came out with a special issue in March of 2020. It’s called 100 Women of the Year: A Century Redefined. One afternoon, I saw Beyoncè looking up at me on the cover of this specific issue of Time magazine, which was laying on our living room coffee table. Intrigued, I picked it up and read it from cover to cover. They had named a “Woman of the Year” for every year from 1920 to 2019, to compensate for the underrepresentation women have had on the magazine’s cover and within its pages. One of the women featured in the issue was Emmy Noether, a mathematician who published proofs about conservation of energy and was alive at the same time as Albert Einstien. In fact, she is even comparable to him. As kids, we begin to recognize the name “Einstein” from a young age, and we hear about him constantly in the classroom, so much so, that most people have memorized his famous equation E = mc^2. However, Einstein called Noether a “creative mathematical genius,” and her proofs helped explain his theory of relativity, yet I had never even heard her name. This seemed to be the case with many of the women featured in the magazine; they made important contributions, but I had never learned about them in the same way that I had learned about their male counterparts.

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing this fall was difficult for me because she was one of the few women whom I have learned in-depth about. She is a personal hero of mine. I watched a documentary about her this past spring that taught me how hard she fought within the judicial system, and just how incredibly influential she was in bringing about systemic change. She was a force for the underrepresented minority groups in our country, and she used law to give a voice to the marginalized. Now, a poster of her hangs on my bedroom wall. I hope to learn about other women who have made significant contributions to society. Not only to give them the honor they deserve, but also because they inspire me.

The day I read that Time magazine, I was filled with inspiration, gratitude, and pride because of those amazing women--many of whom I had never heard of--but the most overwhelming emotion I felt that day was anger. I was angry with the education system because I had learned more about women throughout history in an hour than I had in 12 years of formal schooling. The anger I felt that day is what has fueled my New Year’s resolution to continue to learn about important women in history, politics, the arts, and every other area of society because they have made huge impacts in all fields, and that deserves to be recognized. I am eager to take women’s studies courses in college as soon as I start the 2021 fall semester so that I may change the story of my education. There are opportunities out there to learn about important women, and although I may have to actively seek out those opportunities, that will not stop me from achieving this resolution.