David Spears (George Fox University) on Educational Opportunity
March 16, 2012
Does Educational Opportunity Remain the Key to Success in the United States?
A hundred and four years before Neil Armstrong placed the first footprint on the moon, a Frenchman named Jules Verne accurately predicted that an American would be the first to do so. His leap of intuition was based on his understanding that, “The Yankees, the world’s best mechanics, are engineers the way Italians are musicians and Germans are metaphysicians: by birth.” In other words, he understood that Americans are inventors and entrepreneurial by birthright—it is deep in our blood.
In today’s globalized information age, an age that would surprise even Jules Verne’s imagination, having a birthright is not enough. If Americans still want to be considered the world’s “best” at anything, if Americans want to take another “small step for man”, then we need to take advantage of the educational opportunities available to us. The connection between education and world-changing innovation is not one of correlation but one of causation.
If necessity is the mother of invention, then education must be its proud father. No great American entrepreneur found success without first finding some form of education. We would not have peanut butter, the airplane, or Angry Birds without education. It can change a man’s fortune regardless of where he came from, whether the Dow is up or down, or who is in the White House. Education is opportunity.
In America, the means to pursue this opportunity are many and varied. I myself am a living example of the vast array of educational choices available. I was homeschooled through junior high, took correspondence courses in high school, studied at a local community college, transferred to a private university, and am now double majoring in economics and political science. Who knows? My postgraduate education may reach to the heights of the Ivy League.
My journey may not include the bullet ride to the moon that Jules Verne imagined, but my future will be an invention all my own—propelled by education. Education in all its varied forms is not only the key to my success, it is the key that unlocks the unknown. Maybe I too can predict what America will do in another one hundred and four years. Maybe I too can take “a giant leap for mankind.”
If necessity is the mother of invention, then education must be its proud father. No great American entrepreneur found success without first finding some form of education. We would not have peanut butter, the airplane, or Angry Birds without education. It can change a man’s fortune regardless of where he came from, whether the Dow is up or down, or who is in the White House. Education is opportunity.
In America, the means to pursue this opportunity are many and varied. I myself am a living example of the vast array of educational choices available. I was homeschooled through junior high, took correspondence courses in high school, studied at a local community college, transferred to a private university, and am now double majoring in economics and political science. Who knows? My postgraduate education may reach to the heights of the Ivy League.
My journey may not include the bullet ride to the moon that Jules Verne imagined, but my future will be an invention all my own—propelled by education. Education in all its varied forms is not only the key to my success, it is the key that unlocks the unknown. Maybe I too can predict what America will do in another one hundred and four years. Maybe I too can take “a giant leap for mankind.”
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