A Word About This Issue

Education is the process of being formed, gaining the skills and knowledge to be prepared for life in a particular context. A culture's education system both comes out of and determines its priorities and how well that society will function. Access to education and the nature and quality of that experience are major factors in what a person's options will be later in life.  

However, circumstances before and during school years deeply influence whether or not a student is able to make the best of education. Also, as the articles in this issue demonstrate, a community's education system can be hampered by external forces that cause it (and the students it sends out into the community) to fall short of the wider society's requirements for success. This often becomes a vicious cycle. It takes creative, courageous people to break students and schools out of those cycles, and this process can involve discouragement and even heartache as loving people witness firsthand the enormity of obstacles to raising up children into healthy, competent adults.  

"Hands On: Education" offers the stories of North Park students and alumni who have a passion for quality education and have experienced first-hand both hope and struggle in their endeavors. We hope that you learn something from the perspectives shared here.