Opportunities in education are the product of availability, matched with motivation. In today's world, students have the very best of everything - a world of information at the fingertips. Research that would have taken weeks only a couple of decades ago, now only takes a few hours. Yet even today, we have access issues. We have students who fail to reach their full potential. Why aren't these educational opportunities taken advantage of? There are a number of reasons.

In the not too distant past, wealth and power often determined whose kids would be educated and whose kids would be left to fend for themselves. Society, as a whole, automatically put some kids at a disadvantage. For those families with money, they could afford the best education money could provide. For the rest of the nation's children, a proper education was a distant dream. Access to public education may have been granted, but there were no guarantees as to the quality or quantity.

Certainly, some of those issues still exist today. Call it the socio-economic gap, the income gap - it does not matter. The fact is that families with means generally are able to put their children in better schools with more opportunities. The good news is that this gap between those in higher classes and lower classes is closing quicker than it ever has before.

Educational opportunities are available to nearly all children in the United States, even required. In fact, education in many states is mandatory at least until the age of 16. Failure to go can result in criminal penalties to the child, the parent, or both. Such laws are not meant to be punitive, but rather to stress to the family the importance of a foundational education as the child moves forward in life.

For those in school, the choices have never been greater. A century ago, many of the nation's children were educated in one-room schoolhouses with a teacher adept at teaching the basics, but unable to really explore specialized curriculum with students. Today, students in schools may be offered dozens of foreign language opportunities, fine arts and a entire lineup of other elective courses so that they can not only increase their mental capacity, but also have the opportunity to explore their own talents interests.

Technology also plays a key role in new educational opportunities. Of course, the world's vast stores of knowledge are now at anyone's fingertips with the Internet. But there are other technological advances as well. In Iowa, for example, many of the small rural schools could never hope to offer classes such as advanced college mathematics, Latin, Russian or any number of other niche courses. But the state has funded a communications network where teachers can remotely interact and teach several classes at once, all located in different geographic areas of the state. Students can sit in a classroom with TVs and television cameras, "buzz in" with answers to questions and generally interact like it was a normal classroom, even though the teacher has the potential of being hundreds of miles away.

In conclusion, there is still a lot of work to be done to make sure that no child is left behind (if you'll excuse the expression). Yes, there are kids who fall through the cracks. But thanks to a renewed emphasis on education in many cultures around the world, younger generations are becoming more educated. That is promising. As long as our children are becoming better educated, there is hope that the world will continually become a better place with an improved quality of life for everyone.

Learn more about this author, Kenneth Black.
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