I have been waiting on this one for quite some time UI family. The topic at hand is education and getting into college. At this point in the game I feel and have seen that as minorities, we don’t stand a chance in getting into major universities the way that other do. Now I know that they have programs and all but the days of someone getting into a college or university on their own merit are long gone. The lengths that people will go through to get their kids into these higher educational systems are amazing. The first one that I will address has to do with Mr. Claytron Brown and his blog post about “Public Schools being the heart of our community.”

It helps very little now days for the people graduating in the top classes of these public institutions are not even students whom reflect the race or socioeconomic status of the communities they surround. It is common practice for a family to be quite well off and their child is of only semi successful aptitude, to simply enroll into a public school and with even the lowest of GPA increase their class rank and position. This places that child into the schools top 10% making that mediocre child eligible for instant admission to top universities. The fact that public schools allow this is astounding. This makes a child of modest means who once had a sliver of a chance to go to a good university have to now face the possibility that despite their hard work and efforts, they are now in a lower percentile and must find alternate ways of perusing an education. This puts poor minority students at a huge disadvantage. It is truly oppression on a new scale. What’s even crazier than that is the lengths that the parents will go to, in the name of higher Ed.

For example. An increasingly high number of non-minority parents will now leave their jobs for lower pay to become lower income families so that their children can qualify for aid, even divorcing to change income reports. This takes away from the student who has struggled all his or her life and must continue to struggle because well off parents don’t want to pay for college. Again oppression for the new age. Now I bet you are thinking right now. “Well… that may be well and good for average kids… But the truly talented and gifted are still on their way to the Ivy Leagues for sheer talent alone right?” Well… Wrong. There have been many cases where well off parents have hired scientists to make advanced projects, ghost writers to write and publish books in a child’s name, and many other professionals have been recruited to get that mediocre rich kid into a school of their parents choosing. It’s all very sad. Minority children have no chance to actually enter the next level because of these types of people. It has become impossible to do anything and make it based on your on merit. The only way we can even begin to scratch this surface is by abandoning that “I can do it all by myself” attitude we teach our children and teach them the importance of networking.

The traditional ways of getting into college and advancing in academia have long past and we must adapt to the new era of networking and using resources to achieve goals. Education is very important to me and this angers me to my core that education has gone this far, all in the pursuit of money and power. We must, and I repeat MUST begin the conversation of that in order to achieve success… It’s not what you know… Or who you know… But what, and who, you know combined with as many resources as you can pull together to truly achieve. Now that I have exposed why your child may not get into the school they want to go to, and maybe taught you about why you don’t see minorities getting into top schools as freshman… What is your view on education now? Alright everyone… Let’s talk.