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Causes of social inequality essay
Overcoming poverty
Causes of social inequality essay
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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 …show more content…
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 …show more content…
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
Basic education is mandatory for all kids in the United States. There are laws with minimum and maximum age limits for required free education, but this does not make all education equal. The minimum age varies from four to five to begin kindergarten, while most students graduate high school by age of eighteen or nineteen. However, there are kids that begin their education much earlier. Bell Hooks’ “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, Jonathan Kozol’s “From Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid”, and Barbara Ehrenreich’s “How I Discovered the Truth About Poverty” have a common topic, “poverty”. Moreover, each of these readings has a different perspective with a different agenda attached, but “poverty”
Nelson Mandela once said, "Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom” (Make Poverty History, 2005). Gwinnett county is third in the country when it comes to a high poverty rate, with 14% of the population living below poverty (Family Promise of Gwinnet County, 2013). As an educator it is important to familiarize with the county of which one is to teach in, and poverty is an issue in Gwinnett county. One must understand the affects of poverty on children's learning, how to recognize children of poverty and how to help those students, and what rights those children have to an education.
According to the Children's Defense Fund, 13.5 million children living in America today are poor, and 5.8 million of them are living in extreme poverty, with incomes below half the poverty line. The issues related to poverty -- from substandard housing and malnutrition, to inadequate health and child care services, to severe emotional stress and violence -- are complex and interconnected. Therefore, attempting to understand the problem and propose possible solutions appears to be an overwhelming task. Garbarino effectively provides a lens through which to view the social forces affecting childhood development. Aletha Huston, on the other hand, in her book Children in Poverty: Child Development and Public Policy, proposes a "child-centered" analysis, which focuses on the child's healthy development as "a goal in its own right," rather than as part of a larger social-economic context.
Many people in the U.S. believe poverty is a major issue in other countries but fail to realize that there are high poverty rates at home as well. When looking at poverty there are many age groups that are affected at different levels, and one of the age groups that is dramatically impacted is children under the age of 18. This age group is specifically a sad one due to the fact that they cannot rely on themselves to get out of poverty. This results in many struggles for children and relying on programs and organizations for the help that they need. Although 21.1 percent of kids are ravaged by the struggles of poverty, many organizations are seeking to positively impact this issue through
Poverty is quite an issue not only in third world countries but also here in the United States. Interviews were conducted with 74 families with school-age children, including 44 families living at or below 150% of the federal poverty level and 30 families living above 150% of poverty (Heymann 5). Over 14 million U.S. children lived in poverty in 1997 (Sherman and Sandfort 555).
Children who are poor do not receive nearly as many educational opportunities as children who are rich. Kozol acknowledges that poor children barely have any social skills, which will harm them in Kindergarten. In contrast, children who have been in preschool-like programs since their toddler years are more likely to develop social skills and have early-learning skills, like knowing how to hold a crayon. Children in all social classes in the United States have to take the same standardized tests and are measured on the same grading scale. Kozol questions, “Which of these children will receive the highest scores?”(Kozol 413) Sadly, poor children will not be the ones with the highest score, and they will be held accountable for their test scores, as Kozol points out “There is something deeply hypocritical about a society that holds an eight-year-old inner-city child “accountable” for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years earlier” (Kozol 413). It is unfair to expect a child to perform on a test equally with other children who started their education earlier. Kozol mentions that some people, who are well-educated, feel that money is not a problem with education inequality, and that other factors such as, “The values of the
We as Americans are extremely lucky. We live in a big country with many resources and almost all the luxuries we ever wanted. On the flip side, in America there are also many people who do not have these privileges. The lower class is a struggling class. For many years, people have been trying to pull themselves up from the lower class and the majority does not succeed. Childhood poverty is a large problem in the U.S. It is said that the poorest people in the United States are the children of the lower class. Childhood poverty could lead to a number of problems such as hunger, violence, physical and mental disabilities, educational problems, homelessness, family stress, sickness, and too-early parenthood. The sad truth is that living in poverty lowers a child’s chance to grow into a healthy, well-adjusted adult who will contribute to society.
In many low income communities, there are teachers that are careless and provide their students with poor quality education. These teachers are there just to make sure that they keep receiving their monthly paychecks and act in this way because they believe that low income students do not have the drive, the passion, or the potential to be able to make something of themselves and one day be in a better place than they are now. Anyon reveals that in working class schools student’s “Work is often evaluated not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps.” (3). This is important because it demonstrates that low income students are being taught in a very basic way. These children are being negatively affected by this because if they are always being taught in this way then they will never be challenged academically, which can play a huge role in their futures. This argument can also be seen in other articles. In the New York Times
The effects of poverty can cause negative behaviour in the classroom due to emotional and social challenges. Research suggests that children who have had a disadvantaged upbringing are less likely to do well at school (Connell, White and Johnson as cited in Ewing , 2013, p. 74). Not being socially accepted because of socio economics can deter a child’s experience of schooling and create cognitive lags. For this reason, it is important for schools to bridge this gap. Children from different socio economic backgrounds bring similar knowledge to the classroom, but it is the children’s experiences that can have a negative impact on a child’s learning (Thomson, 2002, p.4). For example, children from low socio economic backgrounds can have high levels of behavioural and emotional problems, anger, have less linguistic knowledge and high levels of absent days from school. Likewise, another factor that can affect a child’s schooling experience is gender
Poverty itself is a controversial and widely debated issue with a variety of opposing viewpoints. Despite differences in opinions on how poverty should be treated, the vast majority agrees that poverty is a problem plagues the nation on both economic and social levels. Economically, poverty affects everyone. As taxes are paid by the entire nation, poverty influences where our money goes and how it is spent. Socially, poverty affects families and individuals on an emotional level. Impoverishment affects happiness and health, the decisions people make, and most importantly the development of children. To best understand poverty, one must look at the issue economically and socially, and contextualize the numbers surrounding poverty as well as
Poverty is “the inability to acquire enough money to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter” (Gosselin,2009). This social disadvantage limits one’s ability to receive a quality education and it is a constant problem throughout the world accompanied with“deleterious impacts on almost all aspects of family life and outcomes for children”(Ravallion,1992). Poverty is a main factor that affects normal human growth and development in a variety of ways, primarily impacting children’s early development, social behaviour, health, and self worth.
There are many views on poverty and how we can prevent it. One in particular I found both intriguing and controversial is the idea presented by Donna Beegle in her writing “All Kids Should Take ‘Poverty 101’”. She puts out the thought of having a class for students geared solely towards making students aware of the tragedies behind poverty, how people live in poverty and their lifestyle, how they perceive learning, and how to prevent it. Teaching students about poverty is a wonderful idea as long as it is not mandatory or done at a time in school where the students are mature enough to take it as a learning and not fuel to tease less fortunate students living in poverty.
Many people do not realize that there are tens of millions of people in America who are living in poverty because they are stuck on the fact that America is one of the richest nations. People who are living in poverty barely have enough money to survive on basic necessities like food, shelter and electricity. They often have a hectic schedule filled with work, school, or other activities that they have to do in order for them to live a somewhat stable life. Unfortunately, there are others who are living in poverty that may be ill or disabled and barely able to survive even if they are receiving money to help with their situation. There are a few programs that help those in poverty with their financial problems, but they only help them to a certain extent. Changes need to be done to help alleviate the poverty rate because these people should not have to deal with all of these hardships or have such a negative perspective of life. Therefore, America can reduce its poverty by raising the minimum wage, making health care more accessible, and by making child care more affordable. These solutions will be a great start to reducing poverty and they will lead America into a brighter future.
Childhood poverty has increased to its highest point in 20 years (Holland, 2014) and become a major concern and issue in the United States. Since 2007-2009 poverty has increased 2.3 percentage points for white children and 6.4 percentage points for Hispanics (Lopez, & Velasco, 2011). The Children’s defense fund states that 1in5 children in America are poor. This increase is putting millions of children at an increased risk of injury or death (Holland, 2014). The U.S. has been fighting the war on poverty for over fifty years and there has not been much progress. Besides health, poverty affects many other aspects of a child’s life and development, but it especially affects their cognitive and education ability. The educational and cognitive gaps
‘Deep poverty affects approximately 3.9 million young children, making them vulnerable and limiting their life experiences.”(deep poverty) The effects of poverty today are huge effecting not only children but “The World Bank projects that the number of people living in poverty fell to 702 million people in 2015, or about 9.6% of the global population.” (World poverty rate).Even though there are many systems out there helping these children, they are still vastly suffering by not being able to go to school to have a formal education and having low educational scores, malnutrition, and missing key social events causing social incompetence.