building blocks

"We called one school counselor the next day and told her that so-and-so was chosen, said Ms. Beck, and she said: ‘Thank you. You have just saved this child’s life.’

... There are so many good reasons to finish our nation-building in Iraq and resume our nation-building in America, but none more than this: There’s something wrong when so much of an American child’s future is riding on the bounce of a ping-pong ball. "

- from Hope in the Unseen, a NYT article by Thomas Friedman (author of The World is Flat)

This reminded me of the documentary Boys of Baraka and the re-realization that with the right environment and the right resources anyone of our children would be capable of anything they can dream, but once resigned to the acceptance of an imposed stark reality that is out of their control then the challenges often become overwhelming and inescapable.