Guaranteeing College to Every Sixth Grader
Imagine two children in urban San Francisco today. Both are smart, both are ambitious, both have the same aspirations and potential for future success and both are subject to a barrage of cultural influences with mixed messages regarding success, opportunity, wealth, self-image, education and careers.
The first child has no trouble assessing what it will take to survive in the prevailing culture around them. The student's realistic assessment implicitly, perhaps consciously, recognizes the dulling cycle of poverty pressing down. With no apparent way out...