There's a fascinating article in this week's issue of Newsweek entitled "How to Say No to Your Kids." The general premise is that the combination of the consumer society, prosperity and teenage hormones have combined to put incredible pressure on parents to buy "cool stuff" like iPods, toys, cars, and designer clothes for their children.

We are indeed living in different times when missing out on the latest update of a Sony PlayStation can seemingly doom a child to cultural, academic and peer derision. Or at least that's what the kids say. Parents know different, of course, but find it hard to resist the pressures, especially as they eye that 52-inch TV screen and the home theatre setup for themselves.

The irony of that article appearing in the 50th anniversary year of the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision of the United States Supreme Court is not a delicious irony. Since I am practically older than dirt myself, I actually remember when that decision came down and reverberations that it set off in our society.

Saying that "separate but equal" has no place in education was a stick of judicial dynamite in the dam of racial prejudice that had held back so many of our citizens for so long. A system of institutionalized segregation denied to millions the chance, the opportunity, to better themselves and to have rich and fruitful lives of productivity.

Of course few people are naïve enough to believe, even 50 years after the historic decision against the Topeka, Kansas, School Board, that racism has been banished from our land and from our schools. In many areas it remains today, subtle and all the more insidious because it is so.

As we start a new school year filled with the enthusiasm and determination that makes teaching and learning so interesting and so much fun, it's a good thing to be reminded that schools play a key role in determining who gets opportunities that can lead to success.

One of the central tenets of the Farmingdale Community Summit is that "Farmingdale Is a Community of Opportunity." More than many communities, Farmingdale has had many successes in providing opportunities for all people of many religions, racial, cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

It's important to remember that for many young people from minority homes, true opportunity is not a new iPod or a new car. It is educational opportunity, the opportunity to get a quality education that can lead to college or technical training that can break through the invisible, but very real, constraining bands of racism, inadequate health care, poverty, unemployment and lack of opportunity.

And if we need an example of what opportunity and education can mean in 21st Century America, we need look no further than to an acclaimed speech delivered at this summer's Democratic national convention.

We heard Illinois candidate for the U.S. Senate Barack Obama describe how his father, a goat herder from Kenya, "Got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity for so many who had come before." A lawyer and a Harvard University graduate, Obama added, "I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible."

Brown v. Board of Education made educational opportunity possible for all. As we begin this school year, it up to us, parents, students, teachers and administrators, to make it a reality fort all children. We owe it to the future.