Remove The Ceiling From Your Dreams: What Would You Be if Education Were Free?

As the story goes, if you tie a baby elephant's leg to a stake in the ground with a short rope, that baby elephant will learn it can walk to the liimits of the rope. Eventually it will stop trying to exceed the bounds of the rope, even when tied to that same stake as an adult, even though, with adult strength it could pull the stake out of the ground and walk free. Still, conditioned to believe its reach is limited, the adult elephant will walk no farther than the length of the rope tied to its leg. The celebration of African American History month often reinforces slavery, Jim crow, and racial discrimination, and we believe we are teaching our children to appreciate the struggle and the triumph over a restricted past. But what we are really giving them is a rope of limitation. We may speak in vague terms of "We used to be kings and queens in Africa" but that is symbolic speech meaning absolutely nothing. When we speak of the usual heroes on the walls of their school during African American History Month - astronaut Mae Jamison, doctor Daniel Hale Williams, scientist Carter G. Woodson, Oprah Winfrey, Jesse Jackson, and now of course President Barack Obama - the idea is that a child can become anything, if their parents can afford to pay for college. For a child with parents of modest means, who constantly say they can't afford to pay for college, this makes success the impossible dream. We have tied our children's leg to a stake with a short rope, and as adults they don't strive beyond it, because we have made education out of reach. We ignore the fact that, in this Internet Age, access to knowlege is limitless. But we can't free our children untll we free ourselves of the notion that others have the power to limit our achievements. What would YOU become if education were absolutely free?