Vox, I understand what you're saying, but I can't fully agree. I do think the playing field is still uneven and opportunities are not available to everyone, but the disadvantaged aren't completely innocent. Most of the poor don't take advantage of the opportunities that are available. I mean, what's the dropout rate for black and Latinos?
People like my brother, a bank manager, believe people have more or less the same opportunities, because he's met and serviced thousands of poor people who have lifted themselves out of poverty. Even college students who, like he and even I, worked two, sometimes three jobs to pay for school, because their parents are financially unable to. He has all these success stories and examples, and looks at people who say they can't because of excuse A or excuse B, and says "why not you?"
As for my solution. I think, firstly, we have to eliminate the current school subject hierarchy, as we longer live in the 19th century. We have to offer the subjects that students really want to learn, and help them become whatever it is that they want to become, instead of imposing the belief that math and science are the most important subjects, while the arts are expendable (how many kids are told by their parents not to study music because they'll never be a musician, or don't do art, you'll never get a job as an artist)
We need to offer more school choices and the money should be attached to the student.
Currently, the US spends $40,000 a year for every family of four below the poverty line, yet they're no closer to being out of poverty. And all these government programs haven't lifted people out of poverty, it's created generation after generation of dependent people.
Instead, we should tell government to back off and allow there to be more benefit/mutual aid societies like these:
Delancey Street Foundation - Home (who teach the homeless and the poor to be accountable for what they do or don't do, and helps them become self-depedent) or
Habitat for Humanity Int'l
And help eliminate the need for this:
Urban Poor Cope with Help from Informal Economy : NPR
I guess I'm a firm believer in that old Polish (I think) saying: If you want something badly enough, you'll make arrangements. If you don't want something badly enough, you'll make excuses.
But, er, yeah, I think my brain just fell out of my head.