The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible. The Pew Research Center has found that some 90 percent of Americans believe that the government should do everything it can to ensure equality of opportunity. ...
... It’s not that social mobility is impossible, but that the upwardly mobile American is becoming a statistical oddity. According to research from the Brookings Institution, only 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners move out of that category, and just 6 percent born into the bottom fifth move into the top. Economic mobility in the United States is lower than in most of Europe and lower than in all of Scandinavia. ...Joseph Stiglitz, NYT
Of course, there's a pretty vocal minority in America disputing these statitistics. In my own experience, these are people who have traveled less (spend less -- if any -- time in nations where mobility is greater) and are wedded to a form of libertarianism that dismisses the concept of equality of opportunity even as they defend the notion that we are already equal "enough." They are often the same people who are suspicious of education -- as distinct from training. Education, after all, requires the steady commitment of the community, the recognition that "we're all in this together" rather than "I'm in this for me." Education is as much about questions as it is about answers. Education is, of course, a basic building block of equality of opportunity. Education also gives us our most powerful weapon against entrenched power and the very people who are the enemies of equality of opportunity.