Dr. Carol Swain has been a tenured associate professor at Princeton and the professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt.

She's known for her sharp cultural and political commentary and multiple book releases.

Dr. Swain, thank you so much for joining us on Takeaways.

I'm so excited about being here. Thank you for having me.

Well, we're going to be talking today about

education in America, and I think that we could step back a little bit and even say that we're

talking about the American dream, and education is such an important part of that. I know that's

important to you. Could you give us a little of your

backstory and explain why the American dream matters to you so much? Well, first of all,

you know, I'm probably a lot older than most of the people. I'm part of the baby boom generation,

the early end of that.

And in my day, we were told that the way to make something of yourself was to work hard and get an education.

And so education mattered.

But I happened to have been born in a family that grew to 12 children, rural poverty, southwestern Virginia. I dropped out of school after completing eighth grade, not because of anything except the poverty. I married at 16,

not because I was pregnant, but back then, if you could get married, that was a way to get away

from home. So I married at 16,

had my first child at 17. By the time I was 21, I had three small children. And I suffered

with depression, the suicide gestures. And I can tell you that within my family, it was an uneasy fit.

I can remember as a child feeling out of place and almost feeling like a participant observer.

And anyone who's done social science research knows that there's a form of research

where you sort of immerse yourself into an environment

and you do what the people in the environment do, but you're really studying them.

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