All Kids Should Take Poverty 101 Analysis

All Adults Should Take Poverty 101
In “All Kids Should Take Poverty 101”, Donna Beegle makes the argument for requiring a Poverty Awareness class to children in grades K-12. The goal is to diminish the cycle of poverty by teaching children the causes and effects on poverty. By teaching children young about poverty and inequality she says those in the middle class will learn empathy and those living in poverty will be empowered to, “understand and change their current context (343).” While Beegle makes a valid point in regards to teaching children empathy, I believe she focuses on the wrong age group, and relies too heavily on the middle class to be the driving force behind the elimination of poverty. Beegle begins by describing her background

So, when a kid walks into school with a cell phone or the right shoes, she or he will be noticed. They get societal honor, the right to belong- and humans need to belong (343).” What Beegle asserts with this statement is that children want to feel accepted and not excluded, and in summary defines the driving force behind peer pressure. It is this very reason why a Poverty 101 class aimed at grades K-12 is not beneficial. Children are already aware of their peers in comparison to themselves, when a class is offered that will even more single out those in poverty versus those not in poverty what it teaches children inadvertently is that we are different. We can be accepting, but those with more are superior because those are the ones with the power to change. Furthermore it creates a rhetoric that states it is the responsibility of the middle class to change the circumstances of those in need. This makes those in the middle class have a pressure they did not choose, and also those in poverty an expectation that they might not otherwise have had. Other than when Beegle states, “If the teacher had been exposed to Poverty 101, she would have the skills needed to find out what motivators made sense to me (342),” she makes no other suggestions on just how exactly the middle class would end the cycles of

Especially in regard to educating children in poverty so they will not fall behind. Helping adults to understand how to help these children is vitally important because those in poverty have different needs and require a different means of motivation, “if poor people were exactly the same cognitively, socially, emotionally, and behaviorally as those from the middle class, then the exact same teaching provided to both middle-class students and students from poverty would bring the exact same results (Jensen).”
“All Kids Should Take Poverty 101” could have been a wonderful piece if the age of those taking Poverty 101 had been older, and if the focus had been more on how those in poverty can end the cycle on their own. However Beegle’s desire to teach children empathy and awareness is a noble