Equity (or the lack thereof)

(originally published on Boundless on January 22, 2012)

I’ve been thinking long and hard about the equity issue that I discussed in my newspaper article for January, especially since a recent phone call from my daughter, who is fortunate enough that her father was in a position to save up enough money to pay for her tuition at DePaul University in Chicago.  She was upset because one of her best friends had to come home from college this week.  His family couldn’t afford the tuition and had to make some tough decisions. 

This is a boy who graduated at the top of his class.  He is brilliant, driven,
dedicated to his studies, and a young man who thrives on itellectual stimulation.  He is the kind of young man you want in charge of our country–kind, humble, observant, thoughtful, and damn smart.  He is the kind of young man we should be training to step into the role of a responsible, contributing adult.  Instead, he’s living with his parents, hoping he can get his part time job at Radio Shack back.

Yet, my daughter explains, there are a bunch of rich kids sitting at her college who are up drinking too much, not going to class, sleeping around, not doing their work, and not taking it seriously. I’ve heard this from other students who come home to visit–there’s a lot of non-academic work taking place in our university systems, but a lot of money being spent on that experience.  I understand it’s part of that age group’s development, and that college can be a weeding-out system of sorts.  But why is that those kids are being granted the chance to receive an education and this friend of hers not? 

Education should not be a privilege–it should be a right.  The entitled or just damn lucky shouldn’t be the only ones receiving learning opportunities, and yet we see this from preschool on up through our secondary systems in our country.  And until we demand that education is equitable, we will not see any change in our nation’s economics, our school systems, or our future.