I am thinking of
the millions of poor children across time zones our Founders could not
have imagined, heading home after a long day at school, shifting their
backpacks of books to find a comfortable spot, sharpening pencils for
math and pastels for art, clearing a space on a busy dinner table for
homework. I am thinking about children teaching other children, older
brothers and sisters teaching their younger siblings, expecting that
they will have more opportunity than their parents. I am remembering
the naturalization ceremony I attended just last Friday at Dunn
Elementary School in Fort Collins, CO, where Kara Roth's fifth grade
class welcomed 26 new Americans from 13 countries to the United States. I am thinking about
teachers and principals and students--while we are here speaking--who
are up tonight, planning for tomorrow, and hoping for a future that
allows them to review at home before they teach tomorrow the best
lessons for teaching the productive and destructive forces of
volcanoes, what Scout learns in ``To Kill a Mockingbird,'' or the
mathematical reasoning that calls on us to invert the second fraction
when we divide. I am imagining a country that fulfills our generational
responsibility by providing quality early childhood education to every
American family who wants it--a K-12 school for every child to which
every Senator would be proud to send his or her child or grandchild and
access to college and skills training that prepare students for
economic success without shackling them to a lifetime of debt.
Keywords matched
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