One thing I heard today has me thinking a lot. Equality, or fairness, is what we chase in our whole life, but will never be accomplished. I recall that one woman asked a question about where to find the shared growth and income fairness. Well, there was a loud applause, but I prefer to applaud the speaker who responded there would never be fairness at all--that fairness only makes things worse-- while instead, we could give children the opportunity to learn.

Let’s just take a minute to think about the Soviet Union and China in the mid- to late 20th century. (There was a period of time when my parents lived in the society with equality. Everyone was fairly treated then so they ate meals together, earned the same wage and bonus, etc.). What did the egalitarianism bring us? Our society nearly stopped growing, since everyone felt satisfied, as they shared the same and lost their motivation to make progress and be better. The result was that our country stopped developing. On the contrary, we do need to give everyone the chance to be not only educated, but well-educated, as it’s the only way each can survive and struggle for his or her definition of fairness.

To perfect the educational system and give as many children as possible the chance to receive education is what our government has been doing all the time. The reason is mainly because we need highly educated people to help our country to keep developing in a fast pace, and only skilled persons have the qualities and abilities to survive in a jungle rules world.

As a matter of fact, education always has something to do with governments’ main concerns and crucial policies. Our government created regulations to decrease the amount of homework, and increase more extracurricular activities to reduce pupils’ burden; sent out scholarships and subsidies to help the poor have the chance to change their lives; made high school education or even college education prevail for more and more students… Bill Clinton, who is one of my superheroes, focused on education during his presidency. We can see how fast America was developing those years (It’s true that there were many other policies that helped the growth that time, but education was one of his most important innovative aspects). If even one of the most powerful countries takes so much notice on education, how can developing or underdeveloped countries ignore it? We are all talking about sustainable development, so none of us can underestimate the importance of education rather than emphasizing on fairness. Women dedicate a lot to education, so growth and sustainability have much to do with women.

In China, we regard teachers as gardeners, and students as flowers figuratively, and people to be or being educated are promising for the future of their country. But flowers need good gardeners to take care of, so we need more and more qualified women to devote to “fairness”.