The First Ten, Twelve Or Fifteen Years

The Ones I Pity Are The Ones Who Never Stick Out Their Neck For Something They Believe, Never Know The Taste Of Moral Struggle, And Never Have The Thrill Of Victory.

The Primary Victims Of Katrina, Those Who Were Given The Least Help By The Government, Those Rescued Last Or Not At All, Were Overwhelmingly People Of Color Largely Hidden From The Mainstream Of Society.

Children, Of Course, Don't Understand At First That They Are Being Cheated. They Come To School With A Degree Of Faith And Optimism, And They Often Seem To Thrive During The First Few Years. It Is Sometimes Not Until The Third Grade That Their Teachers Start To See The Warning Signs Of Failure. By The Fourth Grade Many Children See It Too.

But What Is Now Encompassed By The One Word (“school”) Are Two Very Different Kinds Of Institutions That, In Function, Finance And Intention, Serve Entirely Different Roles. Both Are Needed For Our Nation’s Governance. But Children In One Set Of Schools Are Educated To Be Governors; Children In The Other Set Of Schools Are Trained For Being Governed. The Former Are Given The Imaginative Range To Mobilize Ideas For Economic Growth; The Latter Are Provided With The Discipline To Do The Narrow Tasks The First Group Will Prescribe.

Pick Battles Big Enough To Matter, Small Enough To Win.