Common Schools Years Ago

After reading this weekend and discussing in groups, I found that the common school many years ago wasn't as different from today that I thought.  People in the early 1800's believed that education was power, knowledge was power.  They thought this because it benefitted both the upper and lower class.  The upper class were benefited because they grew smarter in their careers and therefore progressed and made even more money.  The lower class were benefitted because they gained common knowledge about their work environment and therefore were not tricked or fooled by their employers.  Today, I believe that education is very well powerful.  Throughout our whole lives we are working towards bettering our education and schooling.  It begins to get more serious in high school when we are forced to begin to think about what we want to do with the rest of our lives.  Once we make this difficult decision we then strive to reach this goal, and therefore attend college and ultimately usually graduate school.  Our group yesterday discussed how we disagree that schools are completely responsible for teaching morals to students.  We believed that morals are definitely needed to be included in schools, but parenting is also a key factor in both modeling and informing morality.  Equal opportunities were also an extremely important factor in the common school back then.  Even though it is slightly hard to believe, but this important issue is still happening in our society today.  I find this extremely disheartening and unfair.  I believe that children should all be given equal opporunities to succeed no matter what SES, culture, or race they come from.  Each child is unique in their own way and should all be given the chance to succeed.  The future of country is based around our children, and therefore they should be one of our main concentrations, especially now during these rough economic times.