A Fine Line

A member of our sister World Politics class and I discussed today our respective classes' views on the question of a "right to education" and whether or not more scholarships and attention should be paid to the less-fortunate population. My World Politics class took a fairly liberal view on the issue, but my friend's did not - apparently, the general sentiment was that "if you didn't earn a scholarship, you shouldn't get it", and that dissenting voices were shouted down. This report surprises me, as such a dichotomy between the two classes is striking. However, my view of the subject is not so clear-cut itself.

Anyone who heard my final comment in class on Monday can be forgiven for assuming I think that I have no pity for or empathy with those who are stuck with a terrible public schooling experience which compromises their chances of higher education; after all, I did state that setting a floor for spending on primary education which ensured that enough qualified candidates to run the state machine are always on hand is all that the government should have to do. I do, in fact, believe that - if the state can run effectively, whether every single person running it comes from an expensive Catholic school or if there is an ethnic and socio-economic blend doesn't matter to me. However, just because I do not think that the staggeringly more difficult path inner-city and impoverished students need to take to personal success if a problem for the state does not mean that I think it is fair for the individual. In fact it is NOT fair, and although I am no expert, many things I have read (most vividly, for me, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers) have demonstrated to me that people in some parts of the United States, if unable to escape private school, will never be able to contribute to society the peak of their ability due to the constraints society itself sets on them.

What to do about this? In my opinion affirmative action based on race is definitively not the answer. Yes, a system such as this certainly helps the people from primarily black inner-city schools; however, it also helps minorities who have had the same exact opportunities as whites, which is akin to a very unfair and undeserved advantage. In an America that is increasingly - if not close to perfectly - approaching parity between the races, to give the minority who goes to a private school with many other middle-to-upper class people of all stripes and the minority who goes to a rotten school the same advantage is preposterous. Again, I am no expert on economics or anything else in this field, and my suggestions are merely toss-outs. However, I think it might make more sense to take a much closer look at where people live than what color they are. Remember, even genetically identical twins who grow up in different environments will grow to look completely different from one another. Likewise, being a minority may make you more likely to be from a terrible school district; however, because all people are the same, it is where you live and go to school that impacts you. Perhaps by making quotas for relatively-high achieving students who go to worse school districts - no matter their ethnicity - will be more fair for everyone, including the state which will receive the fruits of a larger pool's labor, than making racial quotas that assume that minority applicants are in worse straits to start with.