When talking about education inequity, the issue that comes up is that education inequity leads to a lack of success for kids later in life. The term means different things to different people but what can be agreed upon is that success means a stronger standing in life and a good education is an important foundation for any attempt at being successful. Education in another way can be considered the starting point of a map leading to success. However, education inequity causes this starting point to be skewed and blurred. Students who would have normally had a good sense of what comes next in life to be successful have the added challenge of an unequal education system that does nothing but make that path to the future much harder to see.
As I discussed in my last post, the public school system in Hawaii has suffered for many years due to lack of funding, political pressure, and culture differences. However, the Department of Education in Hawaii has made leaps and bounds since my residency there 10 years ago. Aware that the students of local families were trapped in a cycle of education inequity, the department has since brought college credit courses to public schools and increased Advanced Placement subject material for students. Since this has begun a decade ago, Hawaii has seen an increase in 8% in high school graduates who attended college the following year.
I look back on my public school education experience in Hawaii and I am amazed that the public school system has made such progress. The map to success that I had begun to follow was already blurred for me when I was still in elementary school. The system was so bad my parents were wondering how to transition me to private schools and how to pay for it and how to prepare me for the entrance exams. As the schooling seemed to get worse, the situation became more stressful as we looked for ways for me to learn outside the public school system that would still keep me on the map to success.
If the education inequity in Hawaii hadn’t caused a rift between locals using the public school system and the private school system, the map to success for Hawaii locals wouldn’t be so difficult to follow and the percentage of “successful” adults in Hawaiian society would dramatically increase. What is another obstacle to overcome is that in most families minds in Hawaii the map to success is an altogether different map from what it should be. After generations of this education inequity and relative struggle to find success, most family’s idea of success is to just make it through high school and use family and local connections on the island to find stable jobs. These jobs are stable, but they aren’t what most would call “successful”. “Success” is a very subjective term but if it is being restricted by limitations such as those brought on by education inequity then the term is not fully being used. The situation in Hawaii has been improved but the map to success is still far too blurred due to education inequity on the islands.
A Word To the Wise 