Professor Waterson’s class was an eye opening experience on the discussion of the culture of poverty. The readings certainly contributed to our discussion on the theories of justice. Her insights on issues regarding justice from an anthropologist’s perspective are going to be greatly missed throughout the seminar. Professor Waterson challenges us to criticize and question the media, scholarly research, academics, and demagogues.
Do not allow Oscar Lewis to lure you into his ideologies of the culture of poverty through his rhetoric that seems to say everything you want to hear, yet at the essence of his conclusion he attempts to dismiss the structural violence of poverty. Lewis describes a “phenomenon” that has occurred in the Western society by distinguishing between poverty and the culture of poverty. He analyzes the poor by finding characteristics of those who live in low-income areas. The characteristics that he classifies as traits of the culture of poverty might be realistic and be true based on observation, but the establishment of traits defers from the actual problem of how poverty is predicated off of the issues of class, ethnic, gender, and colonial inequalities. This framework silences historic values thus reinforcing the racialized hierarchy rooted in the history of the United States, which was used to justify genocide, slavery, colonization, and immigration control.
I agree with Oscar Lewis on how there is a pattern within low-income societies that seem to pass on from generation to generation, however, I disagree with his “cure” to the culture of poverty which is offering poor people psychiatric treatment. This suggests that they make themselves poor by holding particular beliefs or lacking particular beliefs, which in the end blames the victims of poverty for their status. Lewis' conclusion is rooted in the belief that he can give the poor the solution to their problems, forgetting that he (the privileged) is the problem through his participation in the system that upholds structural violence.
The cycle of poverty is reproduced through interactions between institutions and children from disadvantaged communities. The criminal justice system is part of the system of structural violence that seeks to criminalize the behavior of poor and racialized children. Our society limits the growth of children in poverty and offers spurious assistance. The kind of support offered in the status quo is one that makes them dependent on the system. What kind of changes can be made to solve the issue of poverty in a first-world country? What kind of policy changes can we suggest?
An issue that was brought up during our discussion was how no one talks about the system, the rich, or the privileged. No one talks about the men/women who buy child sex-workers. How do we shift the burden of responsibility from the victim to the perpetrator?
How do we overcome poverty? Can a community overcome their status of being poor? If so how? Do those who succeed have a duty to their community?
Facts About New York City's Children
(http://www.cccnewyork.org/genfacts.html)
- Every day many babies are born at risk:
· 180 babies are born into poor families.*
· 23 babies are born to teen parents.*
· 19 babies are born to mother with inadequate prenatal care.*
· 28 babies are born at low birthweight.*
- Every day over 479,039 children live in poverty.**
- Every day 14,709 children are homeless.****
- Every day 41% of all elementary and middle school students read below State & City standards.**
28 comments:
Dear Christine and fellow Verons: Thank you for having me join the seminar. For me it was a homecoming and a pleasure to be with you and my colleagues once again. I’ve only been away a few months on my sabbatical, but it seems like a very long time, especially with all the changes at JJ since the end of the spring 2011 semester (the new building, the maze that is now the old staircases, etc.). And thank you, Christine, for your post.
Christine, you cite a lot of statistics, but I am not sure what they all add up to (with so many stats, you would need to carefully analyze them to make meaning out of them). Here’s a single statistic that I think is very revealing: “Nearly one-in-three (31.9 percent) of the city’s children lives in poverty” (Community Service Society data: http://www.cssny.org/research/). ONE OUT OF THREE children in NYC lives in poverty (and the threshold for defining“ poverty” is low; it does not include children in “low-income” households).
In some ways, the thesis of “the culture of poverty” is very simple. Yet, as our class discussion and Christine’s comments suggest, it is very difficult to wrap our heads around the contradictions of the theory itself (as an explanation of poverty), and where it leads us in terms of “solutions.” Part of the difficulty, I think, is that we keep getting caught in the tension between the “individual” and the larger “social” (or structural, as Christine notes). On the one hand, Lewis suggests poverty is rooted in structural forces, yet he seems to suggest that in the US context, the solution is to “fix” individuals. The intermediary between the larger structural and the individual, according to Lewis, is this “culture” that becomes a barrier for people who are supposedly married to that culture, preventing them from climbing out of poverty.
I keep thinking about “Lisa,” the woman who Dani talked about. When we think about “the culture of poverty,” the “Lisa’s” come to mind, although she can’t be said to be “typical” even if she is a “type.” For every poor mother who throws away her children’s books there is another poor mother who regularly treks to the local library to be sure her children have access to books.
More......
continued from previous post....
Lisa haunts me. She is sooooo wounded. We find it so hard to imagine how she could “stop” her children from advancing. Throwing out their books is both a symbol of her stopping them from advancing and the stark, literal performance of it. We have been taught that EDUCATION is the way out of poverty. But is it? Yes, it’s a NECESSARY condition (without education, you can’t advance) but it does not necessarily guarantee a way out. Back to Lisa. Maybe from Lisa’s perspective (consciously or unconsciously), she looks around her world, a world where people like her, children like hers, have little chance of advancement. Maybe she throws out the books because she wants to PROTECT her children. PROTECT them from disappointment. PROTECT them from hurt. PROTECT them from rejection. Wouldn’t it be worse, she might be feeling (if not thinking) if they get the education and work hard, and still get rejected? Maybe she wants them to become “street-wise” because she believes that is the only way they can protect themselves from the harsh reality that is the world as she sees it. For me, Lisa is haunting because she is a woman WITHOUT HOPE. And for me, that doesn’t come from HER “culture,” but is the conclusion she comes to on the basis of her EXPERIENCES of poverty (and the institutions within which she finds herself that are designed to contain and control the poor—what Robert refers to as “managing the poor”)—all this amidst great wealth. After all, she lives in the wealthiest country in the world. She lives in a city that is at the center of wealth production in the world. Poverty in this context, and all that comes with it has stripped her of hope, and thus hopefulness for her children’s future. Yes, it’s messed up. But the poor woman is not necessarily so off the wall. Perhaps her attitudes and beliefs and actions are understandable if we see them in this light.
Here’s the thing about solutions. Yes, the walking wounded, like Lisa and her children need to be cared for. They need social workers, psychiatrists and psychologists. The problem with Lewis’s solution is that it ONLY addresses the individual. But that is not enough if we want to prevent producing more “Lisa’s.” For that, we need more equitable distribution of resources, we need to create a society in which people can live in dignity, with respect and with hope. Christine rightly asks, “HOW DO WE OVERCOME POVERTY?” That is the question, and we (as a society) have yet to give it adequate attention.
I don't think I have anything to add to what Christine and Professor Waterston have already said about Lewis' dubious thesis; between the two of them, they've nailed down its problems and contradictions very tightly. Instead, I wanted to focus on a question raised by their posts: What does the word "justice" mean and what does it have to do with poverty?
We toss around the word "justice" a lot in this class, but in my opinion, we haven't adequately problematized the concept. Justice is one of those words, like "art" or "freedom," that seems forever doomed to remain what Walter Bryce Gallie called an "essentially contested concept." What this means is that the definition is radically political (radically in the sense of "at the root").
The political choice of definition boils down to how we view the relationship between the individual and society. The primacy of the individual in our American "culture" (individual rights, individual freedom, individual achievement, e.g.) leads to a conception in which justice is meted out upon the individual, for example, in court, in social service agencies, in laws seeking to insure "equal opportunity" (like affirmative action legislation) and individual "freedom" (like deregulation aimed at allowing "entrepreneurs" to "create jobs"). I'm not placing any value judgments on any of these outcomes of the primacy of the individual, just describing them. This view of justice requires a theory in which society is composed of what Charles Taylor calls "atomized individuals." We could describe this as an asocial view of the world, and the implication is that individuals make society.
Alternatively, we might consider that society makes individuals. This is not to say that individuals do not exist, but it is to say that they do not, cannot, exist in isolation (atomized). Rather, this view of the relationship between the individual and society puts forth the proposition that individuals are inherently social, rather than asocial, and that they exist within webs of relations that greatly impact outcomes at the individual level. If we hold to this conception, and I do incidentally, then the main target of justice has to be society rather than the individual. A few examples of justice at this level would be a public school system that is free to all (sound familiar?), universal health care, a "living wage" for all workers, and "social security" programs that guarantee that our elders are taken care of in their later years (sound familiar?).
Thus, we must, in my opinion, consider the political question of how we view the relationship between the individual and society when we think about how we define justice. As Professor Stein is no doubt thinking at this point, this sounds like a binary construction, an either-or choice. At the risk of falling into Schmidt's trap that "the political" is about distinguishing between "friends" and "enemies," I would say that we are talking about one thing, justice, and that in considering how we define it, we are indeed forced to decide where we stand on the fundamental question about society and the individual, but also that in deciding, we do not utterly preclude alternative views based on the conception we choose to subordinate.
(More below. Sorry!)
The definition of justice we choose to privilege is deeply related to the issue of poverty--to where it comes from, what perpetuates it, and how to overcome it, which is Christine's question. Let's consider for a moment two views of the world:
1) At a recent Republican Presidential debate, members of the audience applauded when a questioner asked Congressman Ron Paul if a terminally ill young man without health insurance should be allowed simply to die. In a system in which health care is a commodity that individuals are responsible for buying, this is the endpoint of that particular logic: If you're too poor to buy it, then you should just die. We haven't reached this point in the US yet, since we still have Medicaid and Medicare, but these social programs are constantly under attack by those who believe that individuals make society and that justice is about getting out of their way so they can do so. Those who can't make it are just lazy, the creators of their own poverty. Herman Cain has said recently that if you're poor in this country, it's your own fault. Justice is every man for himself.
2) For the second view, I'll quote Naomi Klein's speech before the Occupy Wall Street movement:
"I love you....I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society....That is what I see happening in the square. In the way you are feeding one another, keeping one another warm, sharing information freely and providing healthcare, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says, I CARE ABOUT YOU.... Let's treat this movement as if it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Because it is. It really is."
There are no atomized individuals here, no people who are poor because they're lazy. This is a view of the world in which justice rises and falls in the social sphere. Justice is every man and woman for each other. It may sound idealistic, but there are very practical consequences flowing from it.
Professor Waterston points out the chief consequence, "a more equitable distribution of resources." Incidentally, I would define just exactly that way. How do we distribute resources more equitably? We do it through higher taxes on the highest earners, through investments in public goods like education, health care, and infrastructure, through government-stimulated jobs projects of the type we had after the Great Depression, and through regulation aimed at keeping the private sector from amassing most of the wealth at the top of the social structure and enlisting it in gambling schemes that take down the economy.
I like Klein's worldview better than Paul's and McCain's.
I agree with Professor Waterson's point on Lisa's perspective. Maybe what we perceive to be "bad" and "good" behavior is from our own perspective. Lisa could very well believe that getting an education is futile in our society.
Robert, the understanding of justice as a social construct is definitely an important point. Once that understanding comes to place, we then can evaluate our own judgements on responsibility. It is sad to need to enforce a law that makes the rich help the poor. We assume that individuals who live in a society would want to help those in their community. Are humans really evil without government and structure? Will we really run wild without laws to make us share the land? Is man in the state of nature evil?
In response to Christine's statistics about New York City students' reading below standards, and Professor Waterston's speculation of Lisa's way of thinking, I agree that education is one of the bigger factors of people being impoverished or not. Most people in the world would agree that education is important to being successful, but America has so much problems with public education that doesn't seem like it will be fixed anytime soon. My answer to Robert's question about equitable distribution of resources would be to spend more on public goods, especially education. As Professor Waterston said, education may not guarantee a way out (which a lot of university students are now learning), but I will argue that it is the most secure path to not failing. Academia can always be the back-up plan, even if people decide to focus on looking for other ways of living. Maybe Lisa's education didn't help her succeed, but I wouldn't put all the blame on her. Part of the blame goes to the failing education system we have in New York. I always hear stories about school shootings, overcrowded classrooms, low testing rates, and so many other problems with the city's public education. If the academic part of public education doesn't help us, the teachers who shape our lives can help us. Having enthusiastic teachers who act as mentors can help motivate people to continue studying and make something of themselves in the future.
I always think back to my McNair Conference over the summer, where guest speaker Dr. Calivn Mackie talked about the hardships we all go through in life and the importance education. I know we said in class that having more equitable distribution of resources would lessen the burden of those who have to struggle, survivor stories sometimes support this idea that the poor can make it out of their problem on their own. However, I believe that good survivor stories motivates us to try harder and sometimes we just need somebody (like a teacher) to keep motivating us. Dr. Mackie's story is one of those that motivates people to keep on struggling.
I have had a teacher at one of the Children's Center come to me for advice on college applications recently. The main reason is because the college adviser at her son's school doesn't help him at all except for the bare minimum. Contrary to this type of adviser, the one I had in high school did everything that he could by himself for the entire senior class. I think if Lisa met more people who were there to motivate her, she might not have given up on the security that education usually provides for people's life in terms of job opportunities.
Here's a video of Dr. Mackie giving a part of a speech closest to what Popy and I listened to at the conference, http://youtu.be/3BFCi0UA-xI
Bahhh I don't even know where to start...
Robert brings up a great point about commodities. Have we turned Justice into a commodity? What happens if everyone has a "it's you're own fault you're poor" mentality. Couldn't one argue the general public already feels that?
Lisa is very street smart, she was homeless which means she knows the streets very well. She has eight children, her youngest son was born HIV positive....How do you not automatically hate your mother for giving you something like that? How can you not feel rage for the world?
He's also the son who reads the most books...
I also agree that culture of poverty is aimed at low income people based on what they can't attain. I disagree that the way you cure that is through psychiatric treatment. Personally I think that the culture of poverty is a invisible subculture within the poor society. I have seen how people firsthand identify themselves with this so called culture. Sometimes society tries to give them resources in order to break that cycle, but they refrain from receiving the aid because society has already played its part in identifying them as poor. In a way the Lisa's of the world have trauma that make them take the decision of continuing the cycle and as log as they're in that state of mind they won't be able to overcome their challenges.
Cynthia raises an interesting question. She says that a factor in this conversation about the myth of the "culture of poverty" is identification. Regardless of where you stand on the reality of this "culture," one of the complicating factors is how individuals identify with it (or against it, in the narrative of the heroic individual who pulls himself/herself out of it). I think this is where Professor Waterson's point about hope is so important -- one of the byproducts of such identification is hopelessness (or hope, in the case of the Obama story, or the Clinton story for that matter, the man from Hope, Arkansas).
This really resonated with me this weekend, when I was serving as a chaperone for my son's temple youth group trip to New Orleans. As I wrote to Professor Stein, it was like the Culture of Poverty 3D Experience -- not only the sights, but so many of the narratives of the residents, experts (journalists from the Times Picayune newspaper), clergy, etc. shuttled in and out of this incredibly pervasive Oscar Lewis story of the culture of poverty. The Underclass, lack of history, etc. But what struck me was what actually seemed really different about the lower 9th ward "culture" -- there was a culture, but it was incredibly enabling, full of history, of extensive family trees and senses of honor and obligation. This is not to sentimentalize it. I was struck, while in church on Sunday morning, by the fact that the pews were filled with middle-aged/older residents and grandchildren. There was one person between the age of 20-40, and he was in a wheel chair having been wounded in a gunfight. It was like the Lost Generation we associate with WWI. The struggles to recover these folks from prison, from the streets, were the subject of sermon and prayer. But the church was celebrating its 110th anniversary and the sense of history and community was profound. So was the sense of hope, and not because a bunch of teenagers were coming in to paint houses and clear lots. It could be possible to read this as the story of strong individuals helping one another where society has failed, but I would like to read it the Robert (or Klein) way of it being a story where a group of people came to work with another group of people who were actively working to strengthen their community ties (why clear a lot except to keep people from moving away?). While some of the outcomes of individual N'awlins stories would provide evidence for Lewis's theory, the lower 9th ward is a culture of wealth if we measure it by sense of history, community and hope.
The poor will always be poor and only this fortunate enough will break the cycle. It was an interesting class with our guest Professor Alisse Waterston, who made me reflect and think thoroughly on the difference between living in a "culture of poverty" and/or "poor conditions." From my understanding, the "culture of poverty is abstract concept or idea while living in "poor conditions" is a physical state of their surroundings (project buildings, shootings, graffiti, prostitution, drugs, etc.) I would associate this to what Professor Stein said in one of our classes "we want our victims a certain way." If society gets rid of the poor, who will the criminal justice system file charges against?
I do believe that every poor person has the capacity of succeeding in life, but some of them choose to live that life style, considering it be the easiest way out (such as being a drug dealer). In other words, the poor people might feel comfortable with their surroundings. So moving up an extra level not knowing what they might face might hold them back maybe due to the feeling of getting rejected or ridiculed by the superiors. We cannot only blame society, but the poor people also have something to do with it.
Gary brings up a very real problem: “If society gets rid of the poor, who will the criminal justice system file charges against?” I believe that he is getting to something much deeper about the importance of institutionalizing poverty and its cultural trappings. Perhaps I am becoming a cranky old conspiratorialist in my old age but I do believe that little happens by accident. Structural inequity persists because institutions and systems must reproduce themselves in order to survive and capitalism simply MUST have an underclass in order to maintain an upper class. Under this system, you will probably never have an adequate redistribution of resources. However, what you could have is an economic restructuring that prioritizes less oppressive industries. For example, one of the reasons prisons keep getting built is that entire local economies are predicated on their existence. In one model experiment, a rural community's citizens, dependent on the local prison for jobs, were retrained to have a service economy where citizens became providers of help with transitional housing, drug treatment, job training, etc. for those being released from prison. Now, we can have a conversation about the inherent surveillance function of all those new systems but I would maintain that they are still preferable to having all those people in prison.
On another point, Robert is right in guessing that, just as I was reading his post about individual versus social responsibility, I was thinking “but that’s a binary!” We really cannot tease these things apart because culture is represented through the individual. I reject the idea that the person is a mere cipher through whom the aggregate expresses its will. People take in social messages and massage them, distort them, reject them, swallow them whole, personalize their meaning… as much as society exerts an unfathomably strong pull on us, we also are in a constant process of transforming society. The trick is to juggle these two forms of being in our heads-the individual and the collective-and understand the relative power of each. No one comes to therapy, for instance, complaining about racism, poverty, gender inequities, etc. At least not directly. But if we can recognize in every individual tale something about the larger society and, conversely, understand the deeply personal way in which each person regards and is affected by their circumstance, we may be able to raise social consciousness without abandoning the idea of the self.
Psychiatric treatment for poverty? Ludicrous! If I believed in that solution, I would be druged up 24/7. However, I believe that the effects of poverty can be a psychological one. Even if the evils of the social structure is rectified, many of those in poverty aren't mentally prepared or psychologically ready, willing or able to take advantage of the opportunities if and when they are made available. Yes. I believe that the sense of hopelessness and inferiority can be long lasting. In the case of Lisa (which I personally found more shocking than the acts I hear at my agency), throwing out her childrens' books can be self-destructive or at least destructive and detrimental to her kids' educational growth. But if I understand Professor Waterston correctly, I agree that this can be a coping strategy. A way to deal with the possible feeling of disappointment, rejection and further hopelessness.
I agree with Professor Stein's point about rejecting "the idea that the person is a mere cipher through whom the aggregate expresses its will." But neither is the person an entity unto itself, pre-existing society (Hobbes's and Locke's "state of nature"). I believe that it is radical individualism that teases apart society and the individual. On the flip side is totalitarianism of the Orwellian type, which so fuses persons into an aggregate that atrocities like Stalinist purges of dissenting individuals begin to make sense. I like Fromm's "Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem" (backstory: it's an essay that came up in another conversation Professor Stein and I were having) precisely because it recognizes the incomparable value of the individual voice of dissent, and by extension, the individual. What radical individualism of the type that assumes poverty is the result of a quality or essence or "culture" that inhabits individuals fails to recognize is precisely that you can't abstract the individual from the social, and then use this abstraction as the basis for policy, no more than you can subsume the individual within the social, and ignore the Lisa's of the world while making structural change. What I was trying to say, perhaps badly, was that a better society produces better individuals, and to follow Professor Stein's point about how we're constantly shaping society, better individuals then go on to make a better society, one with less poverty, crime, illness, and suffering. Sweden is a good example. Practically, it's a question of where to target the bulk of resources and policy, and in the US of A, that's a deeply political question.
I love this week's post. as a mother, it is quite upsetting to internalize such mind boggling statistics that i know is a reality. I have to say that much likw Professor Waterston, Lisa haunts me as well. [Remember the excon lady on the train who spoke of her child like an unwanted tenant]. Professor Stein made a very strong arguement in the terms that i guess i was more willing to accept:the lisa's and ruby's of the world wouldn't have to sruggle so hard to get where they want to get if the people in power loosened the reins.
Interesting post, Christine! I feel out of place since I wasn't able to attend the seminar last week, however, you've all brought up very profound arguments.
I'd like to first start with Professor Waterston's question, "is education needed to escape poverty?" My answer is yes! I say yes because I believe education provides not only knowledge, but also helps develop skills needed to succeed. Education teaches you how to network, become a public speaker, write well-rounded papers, and it also increases your overall wellness, in terms of occupational, mental, and emotional. We live in a capitalist society, the only way to escape poverty is to have an education, if not a skill, but that also ties back into education. Bottom line, education is needed to escape poverty.
I also agree with Simon on the grounds that American education is not of quality. Yes, we are one of the wealthiest nations of the world but our illiteracy rates are extremely high. I also agree with Simon that spending should be increased on public goods. I don't agree that education isn't the way out, I believe it is! You may not get the job of your dreams but you will get a job that will help you live more comfortably than before. Simon and I share the same experience of hearing Dr. Calvin Mackie talk on escaping poverty through education. At the research conference in Buffalo, all the plenary events had a keynote speaker that grew up in poverty. However, education was their way out of it. I think there is a need for struggle, without it, there is no success. I also agree with Gary that poor people have the capability to succeed, however that is through struggle and education.
It was a pleasure to have the illustrious Professor Waterston in our class to speak about an issue that I am all too familiar with. Lewis’s theory see’s poverty as not only a thing of economics, but as a culture. While reading his theory I found myself shocked and even laughing at times. Although I understand his argument there are many ideological issues with his theory. Personally I think there is definitely some sort of trauma to living in poverty. But with Lewis failing to address the economic and social needs of the poor, simply healing their trauma is useless. There are also certain similarities that can be seen amongst the poor, but as Professor Waterston pointed out this are people simply becoming a product of their social location. In my view the best way to combat poverty from an economic, social, and psychological standpoint is through education.
Popy is right when she claims that education is a necessity to escape poverty. Systematic change within the public schooling system is needed. Especially in neighborhoods where people of less income live, education is a vital tool to combating poverty or acts constantly exhibited by people living in poverty. Having two parents who went to college, their education was certainly used as tools to assist our neighbors maintain certain rights. My parents were the voice for people against the police, the landlord, immigration services, and many other institutions the poor may constantly run into. So education is extremely importantly whether a job or not job because it could be used a social tool for survival. But at the end of the day there is a great in balance in the primary schooling system which can be seen in many schools in NYC.
Through my personal experiences with poverty I have seen the good and bad of the education system in NYC. But one example of this was the schooling system. Although there are not that many quality schools in this city, I have had the opportunity to attend one of the best schools in Brooklyn and even one of the worst. I went to one of the worst high schools in the city it has been closed for two years. Although I was usually an excited student who loved learning, my experiences in that school turned my world upside down. The school was systematically broken. Students in my school had to be searched everyday about twenty minutes before school. There were police officers constantly intimidating students as if we were in a mini war zone. That really didn’t bother me as much because it was something I grew up to expect from police officers. But what still trouble me today were the many failures teachers within that school did to their students.
Now I have met many poor academic instructors but I have never met instructors and guidance counselors who used their preconceived notions to attack and DISCOURAGE STUDENTS from even trying. This discouragement inflicted on many different students caused them to not only lose faith in the schooling system but ultimately come to school to settle “turf wars” or other gang issues. There was more attention focused on sport teams then actual academic success. This led me to not believe that the schooling system was a hoax and there was no hope for a youngster like myself. I was able to rebuild my trust with the schooling system until I went to another school. This school had many after schools, college level courses, different competitions, small class sizes, and many other reasons.
Roberto's thoguhts Continued
Many of these schools which demonstrate the same behaviors I have listed in the first school are usually attributed to not bad teachers but a poor system. This poor system simply continues the cycle of the poor and leads them into not believing in a system which is supposed to gain trust and knowledge. Systematic change in schools from grades k-12 in neighborhoods where poverty is rampant will encourage and show students there is another way. Showing students that education is a way to help them not become a product of their social location in turn destroying the generational chain Lewis was talking about.
But the best way to end poverty is to systematically attack and destroy the predatory practices in our capitalist system. But how to go about doing that?
EDUCATION. How are we to explain the fact that there are so many educated poor people out here? While eating at a restaurant, the waiter revealed that he was a college graduate with a degree in accounting. I wondered, how is that piece of paper or the knowledge gained in pursuit of it, currently assisting him? He was however able to calculate the exact amount of tip I should leave him..
Simon, I agree with your point on education reform. However, New York City has very high standards for public school teachers in early education. All New York City teachers must have a master’s degree in order to teach for public schools (not necessarily true for charter schools) and because of the recession, public schools laid off many of their teachers. Teaching positions have become really competitive and only those who have graduated from top schools are hired. My point is that the problem might not be on the teachers, but on parenting and mentorship. Your point on mentorship is very important because studies have shown that mentorship programs, such as the Urban Male Initiative, keep students in school. It is important for children to have a role model to look up to.
Cynthia, your point on how groups of people are identified as poor is very important. If the society stereotypes a group of people as the poor then it makes it that much harder to break away from the system. This mentality affects the structure of institutions and how laws are implicated.
Professor Reitz, it is always interesting to find that poor communities tend to have their own
“culture” and way of life. They tend to develop their own history and it is hard not to categorize it as a “culture” because so much of their lifestyle is surrounded by it. I struggle to find a word to explain this without moving the responsibility onto the individual.
Gary, you discuss the individual responsibility of the poor when trying to move up from the social class that they belong. I do think there should be some individual responsibility, but it is often extremely hard to move up within each social class. The system is placed to keep people in their place. Much of it, I would argue, has to do with power and the regulation of it.
Professor Stein, capitalism is definitely at the core of the issue. The idea of capitalism is to have infinite growth and in order to do that the lower class must be exploited. One cannot make the greatest amount of money and not seek to buy at low prices and hire immigrants to work at low wages. Indeed if justice is a social construct and there is no individual without the society and there is no society without the individual, where does justice come in? One would argue that in a community, there is no individual and only the society and its culture exist, but does that also assume humans do not have free will? Humans act on free will, but how much of that is by choice as opposed to rules and laws or even intuition/genetics? I would argue that humans have free will, but we are ultimately limited by the structures of society. When and where can an individual escape of from the community and the structures of society?
Timothy, I agree that people in poverty benefit from psychiatric help. I just do not like the implications it has on the law. Just because a group of people might benefit from a specific type of help, it does not necessarily mean ALL people from that group are defined by it.
Popy, I think education (both teaching and learning) is the most important thing a person can do. I, however, question its relevance to escaping poverty. If the society is constructed to oppress the minority/the poor and keep those in low-income areas in their place, how can a person lift themselves out of poverty? Would they need to move to escape oppression?
Roberto, I agree with you on how the problem with teachers is a greater issue of structural violence. The poor educational system leaves the teachers not having enough time to teach because half the time they are trying to manage the enormous classroom size. Parents of low-income students are often not involved in their children's lives. Many immigrants are unable to assist in helping their kids with homework, due to the language barrier, and other times the parents work extensive work hours. Whatever the problem seems to be, it always develops into a cycle spiraling downwards for the poor community. This downward spiral is predicated off of their lack of a safety-net. There are no second-chances and there will be no one to help you if you fail. Like Professor Stein said, "Some people just cannot afford to make mistakes".
Timothy is highlighting a very true point, that education is not the only way out. As Simon pointed out earlier a college diploma doesn't guarantee any sort of economic mobility. What keeps bothering me is the fact that one out of every three children in this city lives in low income households. In a society which is bent on protecting children from evil forces why shouldn't we protect them from the evils of poverty. There are many ways to combat poverty for these children but only a few to end it.
Earlier I said there should be some sort of equality in resources when it comes to education. But if we really want to end poverty there must be at least some sort of equitable resources across the board at least for the kids.
Christine states "There are no second-chances and there will be no one to help you if you fail." That statement forced me to ponder over the work that is done at my agency. While we assist in giving these individuals "second chances", there is a disturbing realization that there will be so many doors that are slammed shut and locked in the face of these people not only because of their race, social "position" or "location", but also because of their criminal background. "Most people make poor choices or indulge in so-called self-destructive behavior on occasion, but some people can afford to make mistakes and others can't."
Timothy, even if the waiter's college degree doesn't help him in this economy right now, it should be helpful later on. As Dr. Mackie would put it, education isn't about the money that you will make immediately, but the money you will make later because of what you learned.
Christine, thanks for informing me that NYC public school teachers need a masters degree to teach. However, as you also pointed out, the mentoring part of the process is also important. Unfortunately, most teachers in America are not great mentors. Maybe it's because of the low pay and lack of respect that comes with the job. I always hear stories about how teaching in a country like China is very important (was born and raised in NYC).
I completely agree with Roberto's last post, "if we really want to end poverty there must be at least some sort of equitable resources across the board at least for the kids." I can't think of any way to say it any better.
The point I'm attempting to make is that education can possibly be "a" way out of poverty. But I'm not ready to definitively state that it is "the" way out, as I think some are suggesting. An education definitely doesn't hurt but helps a person's chances to earn more income. One of the motivating factors for me returning to college after years away was to increase my chances of earning more income along with the desire to obtain all the other complimenting skills that Popy cited. However, I am just not ready to write in stone the equation: Poverty (+) Education (=) Success (a life out of poverty). I'm sure we all know people who contradict this formula.
Post a Comment