Are Children Really The Future Essay

Are children really the future as Whitney Houston sang in her 1986 hit, The Greatest Love of All? This should be pretty easy to answer as Whitney hit the nail right on the head. Children are indeed our future. Children are not just our future because they’ll basically inherit the world from us, but also because they’ll be laying the framework for the generations after them to come. “As adults, we realize that the real future lies in the hands of our children and grandchildren. Our first priority should be the nurturing and education of America 's youth” (Cuomo, 2014). If the future lies in the hands of our children then just why are they so devalued in our society? According to the National Center for Children In Poverty (2014), More than 16 …show more content…
Property taxes fund schools, which means that families that live in nice houses (or that have money) get a better education. Better education means more opportunities, more resources, more connections, more jobs, and ultimately more money. “The United States differs from almost every other industrialized nation in that it funds the bulk of public education through local taxes and bond issues. As a result, funding for public schools in our country varies sharply from wealthy to impoverished communities, whereas in other advanced countries school funding is generally provided equally to each student, throughout the land, by funding from the nation or state.” (Payne, K., & Biddle, B., 1999) Its safe to say that the more funding a school gets, the better of an education the children in it will receive. Why should children get less of an education just because they don’t live in the best area, or because their parents don’t make the most money? Children, especially children of color, have felt this strain, and not only does it impact there youth, it impacts the rest of their lives. Kids that come for poorer schools are more likely to drop out, especially children of color. John Hopkins researcher, Robert Balfanz stated in a study, “Across the nation, the huge problem of minority high school dropouts is concentrated in a few hundred high schools where a huge proportion of the students never finish, called dropout factories. These high schools are overwhelmingly poor and nonwhite and, apart from the South, they are very largely urban. Though much more attention has been devoted in recent years to test scores, dropping out is, of course, the ultimate failure for a student in the post-industrial economy—a failure that usually causes deep and irreversible