We already know how to "fix" education. Will this be the year we choose to do it?

The year is almost over, so let's cut to the chase.

Education in the United States is an unfair mess right now, and we spent another 12 months squabbling about how not to fix it.

The fact is, we already know how to "fix" education in the U.S. and everywhere else, and nothing else is going to work until we own up to that truth and change the way we live.

So the question is, will 2017 be the year we decide to do it? Will we have the collective compassion and gumption to make it happen?

Because the solution, on its face, is simple: Think of every child as your child (or your sibling, or your grandchild, or yourself -- whoever you love the most), every school as your child's school. The iniquity and inequity embedded in the system is so immediately intolerable through that lens that we would quite literally rise up for students (see what I did there?) in a national fervor.

Something radical would get done, because the roar of demand would be deafening.

Until we actually treat each other like we love each other, nothing will change. And because our nation loves capitalism more than its people, and because capitalism incentivizes profit above doing what's right, it's going to hard. It's up to us as individuals, moment to moment, to see through the illusion and do the right thing for its own sake. Even when it seems counter-intuitive to the reward system we live in.

The black boy that's a year or a month or a day away from that first little event that steers him down that pipeline out of school and into prison, he's someone's son. He's probably a brother. He has a body and a soul.

Think of the kids in your life, especially us parents. Where you would try to get the edge for them, where you would try to get them an advantage or spare them from a less-than-ideal situation, where you would try to get them into the best private school, consider the kids being left behind. At whose expense is your advantage?

From then-Senate-hopeful Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention:

For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we are all connected as one people.

If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child.

If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent.

If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

It is that fundamental belief -- it is that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work.

When we're not giving a political speech, we're free to take that a step further. That fundamental belief in our interconnectedness and interdependence is not just what unites us as Americans, and it's not just what makes this country work. Love and compassion and investment in our brothers and sisters in humanity -- that's what makes life work. That's what makes life's worth.

Our country was founded on racism, but we as humans were not. That racism is perpetuated by a capitalist system in which inequity and discrimination are fundamental. What a task it is to live honorably in such a place! I'll admit I don't know how to do it.

But we are united by our shared humanity, and I know that the best parts of being human -- of being, period -- begin and end with love.

In 2017, I'm committed to doing my best every moment. Let's try it together. Love the people around you as gently and intensely as you can, and things will change. I believe that. We will only fix education by fixing ourselves.