Background Today two hundred sixty-four million children don’t receive education around the world. The absence of education they receive is a result of the extreme poverty in which they live, and the effect is further perpetuation of their condition. Education is a privilege only afforded to a few, and for the many, whose only crime is being born in the wrong place at the wrong time, education is unattainable. For the millions more, however, fortunate enough to be born in a country where primary education is a right, their condition is not so bleak. In the United States, education is guaranteed to all children as a matter of right and not of privilege. From Kindergarten to 12th grade, each state government is tasked with providing quality education that will prepare students for the world they will enter. The Boston Latin School, the first public school in America, opened in sixteen thirty-five as a place for boys of wealthy and elite upbringing to gain an education. Also in Massachusetts, one year later, Harvard University opened as the first institute of higher education in the United States, and like The Boston Latin School was only available to White males who could afford to attend. Education in America was vastly limited until the eighteen hundreds when, in an era historians call the ‘Era of the Common Man,’ came and things began to change. President Thomas Jefferson, an advocate for more universal education, said “If we can... enlighten the people generally... tyranny and the oppressions of the mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of the day.” And since then, The United States has come a long way in its effort to universalize education and diversify the educated public.
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