What kind of education does one require to be the leader of the free world? To cause an entire city to shutdown and ground all flights into and out of the country whenever you visit? Such importance is not attached to just anyone.
The president of the United States, Barack Obama, is without a doubt a very intelligent fellow. If he wasn’t out rightly running the United states he’d probably still have as much power as the guy running it anyways. Ivy League educated and Honours across the board. Some may argue that it has a bit to do with his genes since his parents were also not to be trifled with in the field of education. Don’t believe me? Read on.
Barack Hussein Obama Sr.
The man who fathered the now US president was born in Rachuonyo district, Nyanza Province. While still living near Kendu Bay, Obama attended Gendia Primary School. His family then moved to Siaya District therefore he had to transfer to Ng’iya Intermediate School.
Obama Sr. then attended Maseno School between 1950-1953. Maseno is an all boys national school that has produced some of our most prominent Kenyans and still remains a force to be reckoned with among schools in the country. Obama sr. was described by the head teacher, B.L. Bowers, in his records as “very keen, steady, trustworthy and friendly, concentrates, reliable and out-going.”
He won a scholarship to study Economics at the University of Hawaii, where he met and married Ann Dunham from Wichita, Kansas on Feb 2, 1961. They had Barack Obama Jr. 6 months later. When his son was still an infant, Obama Sr. relocated to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University, pursuing a Ph.D.
Barack’s parents officially separated several months later and ultimately divorced in March 1964, when their son was two. In 1965, Obama Sr. returned to Kenya. He only saw his son Barack Obama jr. once after that in 1971 before he died in a car accident 11 years later.
Stanley Ann Dunham Seotoro
Ann Dunham is Barack Obama’s mother. She was born on an Army base at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and lived in many parts of the United States like Kansas, California, Texas, Seattle, Washington and Mercer Island where she attended Mercer Island High School. She was active on the debate team and graduated in 1960.
She then went on to study Anthropology at the University of Hawaii in Manoa where she met Barack Obama Sr. in her Russian language class. She had to interrupt her studies after giving birth to Barack Obama Jr. However, she enrolled for extension classes at the University of Washington in Seattle fifteen days after giving birth.
In 1963, she returned to Hawaii and re-enrolled at the University after Obama Sr. went off to Harvard for his PhD. She later graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. Her friends describe her as having a world view on everything. She embraced what was different and went where her mind took her.
Barack Hussein Obama Jr.
Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961, in Hawaii. He lived in Indonesia from the age of six through ten because his mother remarried a fellow student at the University of Hawaii, Lolo Soetoro of Indonesia. He attended Catholic and Muslim schools during his early years then was sent back to Hawaii to live with his grandmother because his mother was concerned for his safety and education.
In Hawaii, he attended the prestigious Punahou School from fifth grade through graduation from high school. He was a good student, excelling in basketball and graduating with academic honors in 1979.
Obama left Hawaii for college, enrolling first at Occidental College in Los Angeles for his freshman and sophomore years, and then at Columbia University in New York City. He read deeply and widely about political and international affairs, graduating from Columbia with a political science major in 1983.
In 1988, Obama enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he excelled as a student, graduating Magna Cum Laude and winning election as president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review for the academic year 1990-1991, the first black student to do so.
During a summer internship at Chicago’s Sidley and Austin law firm after his first year at Harvard, Obama met Michelle Robinson, a South Side native and Princeton University and Harvard Law School graduate who supervised his work at the firm. After a four year courtship, they were married in 1992 and had their daughters Malia Ann (b. 1998) and Natasha, also known as Sasha (b. 2001)
Michelle Obama
She is a lawyer, writer, and the wife of the 44th and current President of the United States, Barack Obama.
The current first lady of the U.S was born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson in Chicago, Illinois. She learned to read by the age of four and skipped the second grade. She attended the Bryn Mawr Elementary School (renamed Bouchet Academy), Chicago, Illinois, 1970-1977.
While enrolled in the sixth grade, she was chosen for a “gifted student” programme which permitted her the chance to take advanced Biology and French classes at Kennedy-King Community College.
She attended the academically selective Whitney Young High School where she had to commute three hours every day just to get there. She still managed to stay on the Honour roll throughout her four years at the school. She was also a member of the National Honour Society. She graduated in 1981 as the Salutatorian of her class.
She then went on to Princeton University, in New Jersey, 1981-1985, where she pursued a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, with a minor degree in African-American Studies. She graduated Cum Laude. She then earned her Juris Doctor degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1985-1988.
Malia Ann and Natasha “Sasha” Obama
The sisters were the youngest children to live in the White House since the Kennedys. Both girls attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in Chicago until January of 2009. They then went on to Sidwell Friends in Washington D.C. after their father got elected as president.
Malia is now a junior and already seeking out colleges. She visited Wesleyan University, Bernard College, UC Berkeley, New York University, Columbia, Brown, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford and Yale.
There has been lots of speculation over what she will pick and her father appeared to reveal his preferred choice when he made a comment about ‘liking Stanford grads’ at a summit recently.
It is reported that Malia also has a summer internship at HBO and on Lena Dunham’s show “Girls.”
