At eighty she fills in her first school form
What would a girl do with letters, they said, so she never came near a school gate. Instead she sent her own children as far as anyone's. The day Yong-sim Kwak, who had knocked on the door of a literacy school in Yeongam, filled in her first application, her fingertips shook. Her heart beat harder than on her wedding day, harder than the day her first child was born. For a woman who had lived her whole life for others, her own spring had finally come.
My uncle would not let me go to school, saying a girl who learns to read will fall in love. Not learning became my sorrow, so I taught my children as well as anyone’s. Now, old, I fill in an application for the literacy school and my heart beats harder than on my wedding day or the day I bore my first child. The first spring of my life has come.
— Yong-sim Kwak (Yeongam Literacy School)
TODAY’S PRACTICE
Pick the one thing you postponed because of your age, and ask for the application today.
SOURCE
National Literacy Education Center · 2022 National Adult Literacy Poetry Exhibition, Spring Prize · Yong-sim Kwak, Yeongam Literacy School
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