You Gotta Fight for Your Right…to Education

Mackenzie Broderick

When Horace Mann wrote his report for the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1848, he envisioned a society where everyone in the United States, regardless of background or economic status, would have an opportunity—an equal opportunity—to acquire an education. Tied to the concept of liberty as defined in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, public education from elementary grades through high school became a “civil right.” Although today most of us think of the “civil rights movement” as an era that ended racial segregation, including “separate but equal” schools, education as a “civil right” still needs safeguarding. Unfortunately, during the second decade of the twenty-first century, Mann’s vision for a populace enjoying the civil right of equal access to education has been achieved only to a limited extent in primary and secondary schools, and the inequalities he lamented as privileging the wealthiest citizens are starkly apparent in colleges and universities.

To some extent, the egalitarian dreams of Mann have come true. He witnessed the effects of the Industrial Revolution on American society; instead of attending school, many children were sent to work in factories alongside their parents; many child-labor laws would not even be considered until the next century. But the advent of free and compulsory education took children out of the factory and placed them in the schoolhouse. A free education offered the opportunity for many to rise above the station they were born into, resulting in a large middle class that was almost nonexistent in Mann’s time. Furthermore, even the simple ability to read helped create the fraternity Mann championed because a population that is literate is able to make more informed decisions, from voting to creating labor unions. While education has traditionally been more difficult for women and minorities to achieve, the fact that the disenfranchised still managed to change the status quo speaks to the power of education.

We see the struggle to grasp the civil right of education continuing well into the twentieth century. Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting entitled The Problem We All Live With dramatizes the school desegregation battles that occurred even after Brown v. Board of Education declared the “separate but equal” policy of schools reserved for African Americans to be illegal. The little girl looks toward her future as she walks into her school building carrying the book and ruler that symbolize her readiness to start class, but she has to be guarded by federal marshals in order to make her journey across racial divides. Even later on, we see disparity in opportunities that are class rather than race based. In the short story “The First Day,” another girl makes her start in school thanks to the determined efforts of her mother, who can neither read nor write. But author Edward P. Jones reminds us of the socioeconomic factors that govern which school a child attends. When the mother and daughter try to enroll in the school across from their church, they are told firmly that they do not belong: “my mother tells her [the teacher greeting students] that we live at 1227 New Jersey Avenue, the woman first seems to be picturing in her head where we live. Then she shakes her head and says that we are at the wrong school, that we should be at Walker-Jones.” The mother wants more than anything for her daughter to attend school, a place to “learn about the whole world,” so she has no choice but to take her to the designated school.

While the feudal system Mann wrote of is a relic of the past, the divide between the rich and the rest is widening today. Those already wealthy can afford to send their children to top-notch private schools if the neighborhood ones are inadequate—as many of our urban schools are—or hire private counselors and tutors to supplement their education and prepare them for high-stakes tests that open or close college doors. Schools such as the one described in David Kirp’s article about Union City, New Jersey, that have brought “poor, mostly immigrant kids into the educational mainstream” are praiseworthy but exceptional. Without the advantage of a rigorous K–12 education, what hope do most students have of being admitted to a good college, let alone receiving a scholarship?

The economic divide is most apparent at the college level. Although we have an extensive system of public universities, they are by no means free or “universal,” as Mann described. Even applying to colleges can be more than $1,000 with the cost of standardized tests and application fees. A recent research study showed that low-income students who are also high achievers in terms of high school grades and test scores are less likely to even apply to selective schools: only 8 percent of low-income, high-achieving students know enough about the application process to apply to a variety of colleges, while 64 percent of their high-income counterparts apply to a full range, from safe to highly selective colleges and universities (Hoxby and Avery). Plus, when students graduate from college, and not just exceedingly expensive private ones, inequality takes a stronger hold: the average student loan debt in 2011 was $27,000, according to a CNN report (Ellis); today, it is even higher, making the choice to attend college for all but the very affluent a trade-off between debt and degree.

Civil rights are those rights guaranteed to all citizens, especially the right to equality in social, political, and economic rights. If education is the means to social mobility, political influence, and a higher income level—as Mann believed it should and would be—then in today’s world of inadequate public schools and out-of-control college costs, education definitely is the civil rights issue of our time.