What We Can't Ignore

I often get frustrated with people who think what they have achieved is all through their own efforts and is somehow a validation of themselves and their moral superiority. I'm perfectly well-aware that what I've accomplished is a to a large extent a function of the parents to whom I was born and the education I received.

While I don't believe education is a cure-all, I do believe that all people have the capacity to develop themselves through it and the right to receive it. A perfect example of the efficacy of education was borne out for me in the fact that all of the students in the matriculating class at Oprah Winfrey's school made it through and are going to university.

Now the school has had problems, by all accounts, but the point is that these 72 girls could have stayed in township schools and maybe some of them would have gotten an exemption to university and even fewer would have gone. Now, all of them have a shot at a better life and a life that allows them to give back.