Sarah Baran (Georgetown) on Educational Opportunity

On a personal level, education as the pathway to success can be embodied in a number of different ways. It can mean opening the door to the possibility of college and a degree. It can mean a stable career and social mobility. It can mean developing the bare minimum foundational skills needed to participate in society. It can mean becoming critically aware, acknowledging the freedom of what to think in sequence with how to think. It can mean acknowledging the experiences beyond institutions that substantially develop our lives like relationships or spirituality. All these different definitions of success cumulatively rely on the premise that education, like Plato declared in The Republic’s allegory of the cave, is a changing of desire. It is a shift in perspective that awakens the individual to live deliberately.

In regards to the country as a whole, education is essential because economically it means competitively entering the global rink. Education is the force through which new products are introduced, markets opened, and innovative services are begot. Moreover, national success also means cultivating politically active citizens. Thus, through which, an enlightened legislative body and voter population can attain sustainable social justice.

In order to achieve this success—both individually and collectively—we must address our current achievement gap. This disparity in academic performance, which is based on the student’s socio-economic status and race, has a very complex political, social, cultural, and economic origin and history. Nevertheless, there has been and continues to be a strong movement of reform for amelioration. Many of these initiatives seeking to improve teacher quality, create effective means to measure accountability, development of new market-based strategies, searches for alternative means of funding, and the implementation of comprehensive programs, which span from early childhood to fight the surrounding force of poverty, such as those inspired by Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Renaissance Zone, have all been meet with both success and failure. However, it is important that as a nation and as individuals we recognize the value of education and then place it as a top priority because it is in fact the key to success.