Education and freedom

“According to the European theory, men are divided into classes; some to toil and earn, others to seize and enjoy,” Horace Mann, the educational reformer, responded in 1848 to the circulation of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, continuing, that there is equal opportunity “To have an equal chance for earning, and equal security in the enjoyment of what they earn.”

From serfs and lords of medieval times, to the proletariats and bourgeois of the Russian monarchy. From the patrician and plebeian to the journeyman and guild-master, opportunity for social advancement and socioeconomic empowerment is the common desire everyone yearns for. Education allows for that. Education harnesses one’s talents, applying them in the marketplace to create better lives for themselves.

Mann promulgated the important difference in belief in that education is the greatest equalizer of all, further stating, “Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.”

I would implore all whom are pursuant in advancing equality of opportunity to remain fervent in advancing the various initiatives for educational development that arise within our community and region. Actively supporting the local educational institutions that platform the coming generation with the opportunity for success in their own future today.

Education not only encapsulates the very essence of opportunity for socioeconomic liberation and generational upward mobility but is the active component, as Mann said, “in the balance wheel of social machinery.”

Sasha Fisher

Coeur d’Alene