One of the greatest barriers to education is the culture of poverty. Much of the debate in education policy comes down to how to educate children who don’t come to school ready to learn and whose parents don’t value education. Inordinate amount of resources are misdirected in a vain attempt to entice disinterested students.
In a recent conversation with a public school teacher, Janine got a glimpse of just how wide the educational divide can be and how frustrating it is for teachers who fight this battle.
In a nearby school, children in a particular family were always late for school. Someone in the school asked a few questions and found out that the family did not have a refrigerator. As a result, the parents’ rush to get breakfast for themselves before going to work made the children late for school.
Once the lack of a refrigerator was known, the school took up a collection and purchased a modest refrigerator for the family. This solved the problem. For the next few weeks the children were on time. Then one week the children didn’t show up at all. Finally the children returned to school, but from that time on were habitually tardy again.
Again someone in the school did a little investigation and found out what had happened. (You might want to be sitting down for this.) The parents had sold the refrigerator and used the money to take the children to Disneyland. As one teacher succinctly put it, “This is the culture of poverty.” If the parents value entertainment more than the health and education of the children, what could the school do that would make any difference. And more than that, these unmotivated students are draining away resources that could have been used to educate children whose families actually value education. And thus we see the awful dilemma facing the public school system.
In the end, it won’t matter if the child can color in the right bubble on a standardize test if he values his entertainment about all else. As foster parents, we see that pattern often. Parents who blow chance after chance, lose job after job, ruin relationship after relationship because they never learned to discipline themselves. Unfortunately, that is not something even the best school can teach. It takes a parent to model it, day after day, especially in early childhood.
We’re glad that we are able to teach our children to have some self discipline, to delay gratification, and to have reasonable priorities.
