Today's guest column is by Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, US. Department of Defense. It first appeared in The American School Board Journal, February, 1991.
I graduated from Morris High School on Boston Road in the Bronx when I was 16. My parents expected me to go to college-they expected me to do better than they had done. And I valued my parents' opinion so highly that there was no question in my mind. I was going to college. And where to go to college was not an issue either. I was accepted at New York University and at the City College of New York. But NYU cost $750 a year, and CCNY cost $10-no contest for a poor boy from the South Bronx.
I didn't do exceptionally well at CCNY -- or at least, I didn't think so at the time. I passed with straight C's and graduated only because of my superior grades in ROTC, the Reserve Officer Training Corps. It took me four and one-half years, one summer session and a change of academic major-plus straight A's in ROTC -- but I did graduate.
My CCNY graduating class went off in a thousand and one directions, as do all classes. Many people went the same way I did, into the Army. The Army was exciting: It promised adventure, it was a way to serve and most of all it was a job. For me, it turned out to be a maturing process also.
Between the ages of 16 and 33, something happened to me because later, when I went to George Washington University and got my Master's degree, I made an A in every course except one, in which I made a B. I believe the difference was a matter of growing up, the sense of responsibility the Army had given me, a few years of war and perhaps a wife and two children.
But I believe it was also the foundation I had gotten at CCNY. In fact, soon after entering the Army, I discovered how important CCNY had been. I was serving with West Pointers and with other ROTC graduates who had the benefit of having attended some fairly prestigious universities. But I found out that the education my fellow ROTC cadets and I had received at CCNY was a great one, notwithstanding my own failure to drink as deeply from it as I might have. In terms of our ability to write, to express ourselves, to reflect the skills and mental disciplines of a liberal arts education, to be knowledgeable of our culture and our values, to know our history, we were equal to our contemporaries from any school in the nation. And for that I must thank the institution-the teachers and faculty of the City College. And also the entire public school system of the City of New York- including Public Schools 20 and 39, Junior High School 52, and Morris High School.
My story is not very different from the stories of tens of thousands of other CCNY graduates who received the benefits of a great, free public education. Most of those people fit the same mold I did -- kids from working -- class immigrant families. Their parents had dreams and ambitions for their children -- if not always the means to fulfill those dreams. And we lived in a city that believed in its obligation to educate its youth and to be the dream-maker for those parents.
It was sort of an unwritten but intuitively understood three-way bargain: a bargain among parents, kids and schools. The parents were aware of it. The kids weren't so much aware but just sensed it through their parents. The schools strove to hold it. Entire neighborhoods were buoyed by it-how could they not be? Education was the way up.
Parents worked long hours, many of them at menial tasks. The kids were often latchkey boys and girls. There were so many "minorities" that none of us really thought of ourselves as being in a minority. An implicit trust in "the bargain" and in one another, person to person and person to institution, was undefined but nonetheless powerful, strong and abiding. After all, it was America. And America meant progress. There simply was no disputing that-you could get a black eye if you tried.
Looking back, I guess if I had to say what was the most important lesson I ever learned-and that's hard because there are several-my first inclination would be to say it is imperative to drink very deeply at the fountain of knowledge wherever, whenever and in whatever guise that fountain might appear.
But looking more deeply, I believe there's a more vital thing to be learned. It's the obligation we all have to keep the fountain flowing, now and for future generations. The lesson is not simply to get the most we possibly can out of every ounce of education we can get our hands on and never stop learning. That's very important, but there is more. We must ensure there is always a fountain to drink from and no obstacles to drinking.
We must ensure there is always some sort of bargain -- a mutual promise concerning education -- among the parents, schools and children in our cities. This bargain is the single most important building block of our future. It will determine what America will be like in the 21st century. It will shape our future more dramatically than anything else we do.
I believe it was Henry Adams who said that the purpose of education is to increase the extent of our ignorance. That sounds a bit crazy until you give it some long, hard thought. If Adams was right, maybe that's why my teachers at CCNY and elsewhere knew someday I would be sufficiently ignorant to look back and thank them. And sufficiently ignorant to want to protect the imperfect but beautiful process that made me that way.