Just a few minutes ago, President Obama said that "in the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a first-class education." Sounds like a throwaway line, and hardly objectionable. And??this very sentiment??motivates many of us who spend our days working to make the?? U.S. education system better: we believe that great schools will help needy kids climb out of poverty, especially by giving them a chance to go to college.
But is it true? Is??education really the best anti-poverty program around?
I don't know the answer,??and I'm not sure anyone else does either. (Speak up if you do.) But there are certainly other contenders. Here's one: the military. This might sound crazy, but the military has a long track record of taking poor men and women and giving them solid skills and opportunities that allow them to enter the middle class--and for their children to do even better than that. Isn't it possible that, for some kids at least, getting them "military-ready" would be a smarter anti-poverty??strategy than getting them "college-ready"? (Especially when so many college-goers wash out after freshman year?)
Helping kids climb out of poverty is a??worthy and necessary objective. Let's be sure we are clear-eyed about how to do it right.
-Mike Petrilli
