The Great Equalizer

Let's see..... Who's right?

Horace Mann (U.S. educator, the first great American advocate of public education, 1796-1859):
"Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery." OR

William Osler (Canadian physician, 1849-1919):
"Work is the open sesame of every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher's stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold."

Booker T. Washington: "The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts...At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence... Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top." OR

W.E.B. DuBois:
"The purpose of education is not to make men carpenters, but to make carpenters men...It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American...All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their bellies, and no God greater than Gold."

Seems like we've been having this debate for years, ever since the distinction was made between Cain (who was a hunter, a man of the field, Daddy's dude) and Abel (who was a 'Momma's boy', a good cook). But this issue has great import for Black inner city youth today, whose futures are being decided in part by schools that are being created in their neighborhoods. Some folks have given up hope that teens from the 'ghetto' have what it takes to go to college, so they posit a career-focused education, pushing schools that will teach these youth a trade and give them skills to earn a 'living'. Still others see the disadvantage of telling Black kids they don't have to go to college: when 90% of the fastest-growing jobs in this country require some post-secondary education, when factory jobs that could once be relied on to 'pay a good wage' are now either overseas or no longer needed in a hyper-techno age, it seems kinda sick to push something that these same folks wouldn't want for their own kids. Yet, the reality of the ghetto is hard. If kids historically have been dropping out of school because they're unprepared for the academic rigor and social demands, might it not be wise to tap into a possible desire for a hands-on kinda education, in order to motivate the youth to stay in school and then give them something for their time in high school? I dunno. Would love to hear what others think.

Feel like the Queen of Quotes today, but I haveta share this W.E.B. Du Bois one (Bill Cosby wasn't the first to utter such statements):
"A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills."