“Drawing out” lessons from the origin of “education”

They wore their medals for weeks afterwards. 

Samantha and Anthony* had never won anything before.

Silver medals. Second place. “The Wright Stuff.” In which students engineer indoor, free-flight, rubber-powered monoplanes.

That is, making balsa wood—better yet, impossibly precise and delicate assemblies of balsa wood—fly.

The Wright Stuff had a reputation as one of the hardest events at the Science Olympiad, an intense academic competition across college-level STEM subjects for middle and high school students.

For another event, Anthony and Samantha had to construct a musical instrument, perform a short piece on it, and answer questions about the physics of music. In yet another, they had to combine general knowledge with orders of magnitude to speed-estimate answers to absurd questions like “How many Q-tips could fit in the inner core of the Earth?” or “How many piano tuners are in Chicago?”

Samantha and Anthony were part of a larger team made up of students from schools across Cincinnati. But not just any schools—high-poverty public schools. And they were up against some of their most affluent and privileged counterparts, some of whose parents even designed jet engines for GE.

I was their coach, and I worked with the two through GEAR UP, or Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. 

The guiding principle of GEAR UP is that every student, and especially our most in need, deserves opportunities for—and the high expectations of—postsecondary education. 

Through the program, we GEAR UP instructors provided interventions—such as in-class support, after-school help, and out-of-school activities like the Science Olympiad—to help students increase their access to and preparation for college.

GEAR UP was my first job out of college. And it was funded by a grant awarded by the Department of Education.

Education. Ultimately from the Latin ēducātiō, “upbringing, nurture.” (The Latin concerned raising children as well as rearing animals.) 

The Latin noun ēducātiō is, in turn, based on the verb ēducāre, which combines the prefix ē-, “out of, from,” and dūcere, “to lead, guide, direct, draw.”

Etymologically, an education is a “drawing out” of the innate qualities within a person. 

Today, we associate education with academic instruction, but back in the 1520–30s, when the word is first recorded in English, it concerned the broader moral and social formation of a young person by developing their character. By drawing out their abilities, their aptitudes, their attributes—given to them, to every child, by dint of their humanity—through care, attention, and encouragement.

And that, that formation of character, is what Anthony and Samantha’s medals represent. 

Not any mastery of fluid dynamics—though their plane rose so smooth, its path circled so sure that it widened to the point it bumped a basketball backboard, jostling them just short of the gold.

It represents their inborn intelligence and diligence no matter what circumstances of poverty and injustice they were born into. It represents how they deserve to experience success and feel self-confidence. How they deserve to see themselves as capable agents in a world that counts them out. How they deserve to be challenged and motivated and uplifted. 

Their astonishing second-place medal—I still remember how we all rocketed up in pride and joy when the judges announced the winners at the end of that long competition day—represents how they deserve a first-rate education.

This is what is dismantled when we dismantle the Department of Education. This is what is denied and deprived. Potentials, possibilities, careers, real futures that don’t get to take flight. Characters, identities, dignities, entire lives that are shut in and sealed off—not “drawn out” to flourish. To thrive. To soar.

*Pseudonyms for privacy.