There’s Always Money for Everything But Education

You learn valuable lessons from growing up in a Black home, but sometimes those lessons are the ones you don't want to learn. Contradictions are evident everywhere. With every season, you are able to get the newest sneakers being released, branded jackets emerge out of nowhere, and the phone of your dreams materializes. However, your school is overcrowded, the textbooks are out of date, and homework frequently feels like something you're doing alone. Anything pertaining education? "We don't currently have the money."

You witness it manifest in painful ways. Your cousin's birthday is celebrated with a DJ, catering, and decorations, while your own school payments are past due. While bursary applications remain unsigned in a dusty folder, a kitchen is being renovated in a style fit for a magazine. The family car has been updated, but are you putting money down for the university tuition fund? All of a sudden, that is not conceivable.

It's not usually about poverty, but rather about decisions. More important than viability is visibility. Long-term knowledge investment is frequently subordinated to status, looks, and rapid enjoyment. Education is slow, imperceptible, and intangible; it doesn't appear on social media, impress neighbours, or bring about instant happiness.

And whether we like it or not, the message becomes clear. Knowledge becomes negotiable. Appearance, experience, and style are not. You learn how to look beautiful and enjoy life while you're growing up, but do you also learn how to make plans for the future? That is an unfamiliar idea. It's a sad irony that even if you live comfortably and are well-groomed, you cannot be ready to take your place in the world.

This undervaluation of education is a generational issue as much as a personal one. Cycles continue in the absence of intentional investment. Children observe, absorb, and replicate the same patterns. The school system, which has the power to change lives, is neglected in favour of parties, branding, and ostentatious pleasures.

There is more to education than just tuition, clothes, and textbooks. It's liberty, it's a chance, it's agency. At birthday celebrations, it's the ticket out of cycles that nobody discusses. We'll continue to see money for everything but the one thing that truly matters is knowledge, development, and the opportunity to advance until education becomes unavoidable.

In actuality, you may provide a child with everything food, clothing, phones, and experiences but if you don't educate them, you're only giving them the appearance of riches rather than the possibilities. And compared to any bank loan, that debt is significantly higher.