"It certainly wasn't fair...for the schools I attended as a child to require me to take the same tests as children from families with more than twice as much education and several times as much income.
What would have happened if the schools had been "fair" to me in that sense? I would have learned less, had a much easier time in school -- and would have gone out into the world not even knowing enough to realize how little I knew.
By now, I might have been on welfare or in prison. But my teachers would have felt good about themselves for giving a poor boy from the ghetto a break."
From today's column
