A need for equality in education

When first running track, I noticed something startling and horrifying which I was previously oblivious to.

Our team participated in a meet at a school in a low-income area, where I noticed the precarious state their field was in. The bleachers were rickety and undersized. The track was inferior to anything I saw. Everything appeared worn out. If I had visited earlier, there wouldn’t be any lights since they were recently constructed.

This shabbiness juxtaposed from two months earlier from when I ran at Stevenson High School’s field house. The outdoor stadium featured a jumbotron, and on the inside the lavishness continued. Everything there appeared pristine and spacious. The cafeteria boasted about its “commitment to sustainability” adjacent to a posh auditorium and a laundry list of sports championships.

Those titles contrasted to the dire situation of the low-income school. They typically finished winless in football, and failed to complete a cross country roster. At that meet, a younger me had an epiphany—we give poorer students a second-class education. Sports teach low income kids they are set up for failure.

I ask our politicians and your readership how we continue to let this blatant inequality of opportunity happen at schools. Our republic founded itself on the dream of equality when we declared our independence by stating “all men are created equal.” Our nation is in the bottom quarter of most unequal countries according to the World Bank’s gini coefficient measurements. When Horace Mann, the Father of American Education said that education is “the great equalizer of the conditions of men,” he imagined that all Americans would have equal access to the same quality education. We fail to live up to his vision.

James Glaskin-Clay

Mundelein