There are plenty of things that are necessary for children in order for them to have a true and fair opportunity of success in this world, in which, one of the most crucial, is the sheer amount of time that they spend outside of their homes, particularly at school, Monday through Friday, for five or six hours or so, during the school year. Each citizen of these United States are entitled, by law, to attend a free public school, that will, in theory, educate them so that they will be able to read, write, do arithmetic, and many other things that makes these students literate and functional in society, as well as giving them the opportunity to take this foundation and accomplishments onward to college and higher education.
The importance of schooling in today's hi-technology world is paramount, for the jobs of old, that paid well those of the blue-collar mentality, while still existing, have been in a steep decline for the last two generations and show no signs whatsoever of making a comeback within this nation. In addition, those that have limited educational skills, little real knowledge as well as questionable maturity, are at an extreme disadvantage in everything that they engage with on a daily basis, so that they, much more than others of better schooling, are both exploitable by the unscrupulous as well as vulnerable to all sorts of bad things.
Further to schooling, America has an absolute obligation to take care of those that were denied equal opportunities, by virtue of the fact that their schools were of substantially less quality on a substantially less budget with teachers and tools of lesser skills, but have failed in actuality to have adequately addressed these very things, despite legislation and judicial decisions that have mandated such.
It is one thing, when we lived in a society that sold the lie of "separate, but equal", in which the separation part was certainly true, but the equal part was a total and complete lie, yet still somehow many years later the school quality depending upon where you reside is today extremely unequal, and the separation between the races, along with between incomes, is growing year by year, so that those that are of the lowest socio-economic level, as compared to those of the highest socio-economic level, are attending schools, that are so far apart in the quality and purpose of that education, that the best schools teach with the best teachers and best infrastructure, while the worse schools, have teachers that are often just trying to endure, with students that are disinterested and disengaged. In this type of tremendous divide, these students of these lesser schools have no chance, and no opportunity, so consequently they basically fail to develop even the rudimentary skills necessary to place them in the catbird seat of real opportunity of achieving much of anything in regards to their future higher education pursuits and subsequently jobs of real substance and high quality.
The greatest tragedy of them all, however, is that those of earlier generations that suffered through being treated as second class citizens, if even that, have discovered, that their grandchildren are in most circumstances, in no better place than they were, for they are in schools that are unequal, dysfunctional, pathetic, and destructive to their inner aspirations and dreams. So that, it can be said, in America, despite the poetic words and meaningful legislation mandating public education in a fair and equal manner, basically all of those at the lowest socio-economic levelare born into this country, with their dreams drained out of them and with lives that are brutal, short, and tragic.