Education's role in understanding historical injustice and social change

¶ … Education Means to Me

My first thought about what education means to me is agreeing with President Barack Obama when he said, "If we want America to lead in the 21st century, nothing is more important than giving everyone the best education possible." The president went on to say that from the day a child begins preschool to the day that person is an adult and begins a career, they must be well educated.

To me, education matters more than just getting a good, well-paying job after graduation from high school or college. Getting a degree is important for families in the future because the cost of living, of buying a home, of raising children, is always on an upward slope. But more than a degree, education means being well-rounded and it means having a perspective of what has happened in the past to lead us here.

For example, unless you live there and have experienced the hardship, it is hard to understand the violence and upheaval in the community of Ferguson, Missouri. But an educated person understands that for hundreds of years there has been injustice and unfairness in our communities, but there has always been a movement to work for justice and fairness and civil peace. The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s is a classic example of how people responded to Jim Crow laws, how they used protests and political power to change the evils of segregation.

But an uneducated person is not likely to understand how those events of the 1960s -- including the organizations led by Dr. Martin Luther King and others helped change the way society treats minorities. An uneducated person won't know about the lynching of hundreds of African-Americans that went on especially in the south for many years; an uneducated person won't have heard of the Ku Klux Klan and other hateful white supremacist organizations; and an uneducated person is not likely to understand how President John Kennedy sent troops to the south to force universities to admit black students. Also, an uneducated person is not likely to understand what President Lyndon Johnson had to do to cajole certain conservative U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives to vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. It is quite an astonishing study to read how President Johnson was so determined to get this legislation passed that he cut deals with many Senators, and in instances he threatened to cut off certain federal assistance to some states if the Senators and Congressmen from those states didn't sign on to get the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights legislation passed. History is fascinating, and not just from the Abraham Lincoln era, or the Franklin D. Roosevelt era, but from every period in the history of the United States and the world.

But, on the other hand, an educated person can put all those events and personalities into perspective when viewing the troubles in Ferguson and elsewhere when there is tension between authorities and the citizens.

To me, there should be moire scholarships available for young people who don't have the financial means to attend a college or university. For these young people to be left on the sidelines wishing for an education but not being able to afford higher education is a tragedy for America.