Equal Opportunity in Education
Charles Murray
Equal Opportunity in Education
The whole object of education is...to develop the mind. (Sherwood Anderson) The United States of America has developed a system to educate its youth by a publicly funded system. It is the law and born civil right of each citizen to attend some form of education by a particular age. The public school system is set in place for those who choose not to send their offspring to private, religious, or charter schools. This is the present incarnation of the public school system. It is said to be equal in all manner throughout the country. That has not always been the case in this nation. That has brought forth numerous laws and enactments to grant those who find themselves on the lesser side of gaining knowledge more of an equal footing where education is concerned.
In this land of opportunity, there is an expected level of availability that is expected. In a world of intense competition from within and outside of the country education one of the few ways of balancing the scales of the socially or monetarily disadvantaged is proportionate education. In this nation children have at one point or another in history been systematically held back for one reason or another. The reasons differ in the once beliefs that they were not able to learn or personal thought of not being worthy to be taught. In 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson granted the states the right to uphold the separate but equal doctrine that ruled the land. This was a great lost to all those that held a hope those later generations would do better than those who came before.
Education began to become more balanced when separate but equal was pushed aside by the landmark case of Brown vs. The Board of Education. In 1954 The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Henry Billings Brown. This would begin the integration of public school which was the first step into equal opportunity