I grew up in a society with a dangerous myth, one that suggests that everyone has the same chances in life, that one can pick themselves up from any circumstances and become something better. I’d like to think that myth has become less pervasive in recent years, but the dearth of social policy to help people who need it suggests otherwise.
Because we don’t all have the same chances in life.
Because chances for some of us are handed over on a silver platter, or otherwise lovingly passed from parent to child, while chances for others need to be scratched out of concrete with nothing more than one’s own fingernails.
In the society I grew up in, the former is upheld as the way things “should be.” The latter is celebrated as confirmation that the myth is reality; it should be celebrated because of its improbability.
More often than I had expected, I find myself thinking of the baby boy born to my hospital roommate the day before my daughter came into the world. I remember how the nurses pointed out to her that the baby needs her attention and physical contact. I remember how she called her partner to tell him that the baby needs a sleep sack and his own little bed. Her eyes rarely left her phone during the days we shared a room, but she cooed lovingly at the baby when changing his diaper and clothes. The phone was somewhere else at those moments. But for the distractions of the media world, she might have been there for him.
I’ve run into her a few times in town, the baby always on her chest. Maybe she has had a change of heart or mind and realized the choice she made by having a baby. Or maybe the tiny moments I have seen are simply tiny moments.
I wonder how the baby is doing. When I imagine his home life, I wonder how his chances in life will look. Our two babies were born in the same hospital with the same team of midwives and doctors, one day apart. On paper, they are equal. In a fair world, they would have the same chances in life. But then I think about his first days and her first days and I know: there is a difference between fairness and equality. In the real world, despite efforts by different societies, people fall through the cracks. I grew up in a society that refused to see the cracks, or blamed the cracks on the individuals needing help. I am living in a society that sees the cracks and has imperfect systems that attempt, however clumsily, to address them.
My students have recently finished exams and will soon celebrate the completion of their schooling. While I was not there for the critical last months, I have spent a great deal of time with this group of young people, teaching some of them since arriving in Germany nearly five years ago. I have watched them mature, become more confident, make mistakes, pick themselves up. They may have gotten to the end in different ways, but they all got there.
Some of them took their exams in separate rooms. Some of them were allowed to type rather than write their answers. This is not equal, but it is fair. In order to be able to do what exams want them to do – demonstrate a certain type of knowledge – some students need different starting points. In the end, they will be evaluated equally, but the way they get to the end is not always the same.
On a larger scale, however, nothing about this is fair. My students attended private school and have completed the exams that will allow them to attend universities around the world if they choose to do so. That puts them in a very different position than young people who do not have these advantages. Regardless of the community we live in, we expect everyone to play a productive role in society. It is the responsibility of the society to build communities in which there is space for each of us, in our own ways, to do so. We might not all contribute equally, that is, in the same way, but we should all be set up to contribute in the ways that we can, which is fair.
I think about my hospital roommate’s baby boy. I look at my daughter and imagine the future that my partner and I are working to set up for her. In the event that these two babies do not have equal opportunities in life, I hope they grow up in a society that provides them with fair chances and is there to catch them before they fall through any cracks. I hope that my students, with the opportunities they have been given, will help to create that society.
By Rebecca Michelle 