This year, we must address the Colorado Paradox. We have more college degrees per capita than any state. Yet we lag the nation in the percentage of students who go on to higher education.
Education should be one of our top funding priorities; talking about it does not help the teachers and students who desperately need promises fulfilled.
A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that 'individuality' is the key to success.
We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.
Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.
While I was there I became deeply interested in photography, and indeed the most noteworthy event in my early life was winning first, third, fourth and seventh prizes in an international competition for college and high school students.
The visual information of art history is going to students seamlessly, without the enormous trouble those of us who are older had when we studied art history many years ago.
So I applied to medical school and received a scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis. Washington University turned out to be a lucky choice. The faculty was scholarly and dedicated and accessible to students.
We can't forget what happened on May 4th, 1970, when four students gave up their lives because they had the American constitutional right of peaceful protest. They gave up their lives. And to sing that song in that spot on that anniversary was very emotional for us.
If American schooling is inadequate now, just imagine how much more obsolete it will be when today's kindergarten students graduate from high school in just 12 years.
Today in America, we are trying to prepare students for a high tech world of constant change, but we are doing so by putting them through a school system designed in the early 20th Century that has not seen substantial change in 30 years.
