Just weeks ago I was happily writing in this space about awareness and hope around education in this country, as I had just seen "Waiting For Superman" and the Newark, N.J., school system had just received a $100 million commitment from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Now, as we approach Election Day, some candidates seem to be high on the loaded word “elite” (as in, well educated, intellectual) and using it to put down the opposition and the current administration.

Mercy. The juxtaposition of these two trends is unsettling me to my core.

Blessedly, I got some insight about it the other day while I was cleaning my bookshelves. I came across 
"The Dream Book" -- my treasured anthology of writings by Italian-American women --and memories of how validated it made me feel the first time I read it started flooding back. 

In the larger picture, I realized I am one of those Americans who gets extra squeamish when the national conversation is about promoting education one minute and denigrating it the next because it feels so much like the schizophrenic atmosphere I grew up in.

I have always been passionate about reading and writing and can’t recall a time when I wasn’t doing both. Yet it always made me feel like I was odd, as those pursuits require large chunks of solitude and introspection. When it came time to decide what to do after high school (where I was always encouraged by my parents to excel), I decided to go to college. My choice was met by my family with skepticism and bewilderment.

My best high school friend, expected to attend college by her family, asked, “What else would you do?”

Once at Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey), a supportive, persistent journalism professor helped guide me through some stops and starts to a degree in journalism and professional writing.

Many years later, well into my journalism career and again to the sheer bewilderment of family, I was awarded a Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan (Oh no, more education?). It was there that I did a creative writing tutorial with Carolyn Balducci, who introduced me to The Dream Book.

Its editor, Helen Barolini, wrote a 56-page introductory essay that contained so much historical information about the Italian-American mindset that I felt like my whole life had finally been explained to me.

“In America schools were not always regarded [by Italian immigrants] as the road to a better future; more often they were seen as a threat to the family because they stressed assimilation into American ways,” Barolini wrote. “Reading was ridiculed as too private, too unproductive, too exclusive an enjoyment – free time should be spent with the family group. Learning gave one ideas, made one different; all the family wanted was cohesion.”

Click. Light bulb on.

And then there was (more) light.

“At best women are getting a mixed message,” Barolini wrote. “Yes, better yourself, but don’t get better than your family; do better economically, but not in your mind and spirit, which would then take you away from us.”

Imagine, then, a child or teen today who even remotely doubts the value of education and is not being encouraged by family to pursue it. That’s hard enough. Then they turn on the television or (pray tell) read an online news source and see candidates putting down education or wearing their own lack of knowledge like a badge. Will that child put out the effort in school? Or even consider college?

According to a piece published on the American Enterprise Institute Web site by the Washington Post’s Charles Murray, “Students who have a parent with a college degree accounted for only 55% of SAT-takers this year but got 87% of all the verbal and math scores above 700, according to unpublished data provided to me by the College Board. This is not a function of SAT prep courses available to the affluent -- such coaching buys only a few dozen points -- but of the ability of these students to do well in a challenging academic setting.”

Message is key; that means what kids are hearing and how they’re processing it. Outside of my extended family, the message was pretty consistent -- college was the societal norm. I felt encouraged by classmates, teachers, and friends. Still, I quit college after three semesters and it took me several years to go back. In that time away, I realized I was defensive when asked if I had a college degree. A wise supervisor told me, “Sometimes college isn’t about making you smarter, it’s about showing you can stick to something.” I went back and finished while working in my field of study.

Apparently, this issue of candidates touting their ignorance (and pundits amplifying it) is personal for me. Now I get it. To be clear, mine is not a hard-luck story, just a hard-fought one that has been valuable in shaping me. I have a loving, hard-working, smart family, but what they had in mind for me and what I had in mind for me didn’t line up. I found my way and we’re all better for it.

“For the modern woman it means that traditional power (based upon selflessness and sacrifice) has been lost in the name of autonomy and self-awareness,” Barolini wrote.

And to that I say, amen. Not just for my sake, but for anyone who wants something more than living in the box they’ve been assigned.

Elite, intellectual, educated – not dirty words or weapons to wield when your aim is to get elected and lead. Just assets for moving onward and upward.

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.