You never know which kids are poor

"Principals know which kids are poor."  This is often said in meetings and it makes me want to scream.  It's rarely said by principals though.  Children go to great lengths to hide the shame of poverty and principals know they have no way of knowing which students are truly poor.

Poverty is a constant gnawing in the pit of the stomach and an inability to think about anything other than food.  It is a lack of payment for field trips and the humiliation of being asked once again to bring in the money.  It is the hand-me-downs that don't quite fit and the mocking that follows.  It is being fat and being teased as children who often live on little more than sugar and fat are overweight.  It is loneliness as inviting friends to your home is unthinkable.  It is often the double jeopardy of mental illness and addiction in a family member.  And it has less to do with the lack of resources and more to do with a lack of self-worth.

Poverty is the constant punishment for the ridiculous crime of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.  In 1989, the federal government vowed to end child poverty by 2000.  Instead even more children are poor1 and more than one in seven Canadian children today lives in poverty.2  

I'm not an educator but I've learnt to read my audience.  When the educators in the room sit up and take notice, I think about it.  Often enough, ideas that are common to social workers or community activists are foreign to educators.  And in fairness, the opposite holds true too.  

There's more implied by "Principals know which kids are poor".   Educators tend to think of poverty as an illness to be cured a child at a time, the medical model of disease.  Like physicians with treatments, educators often believe they can address child poverty if principals have sandwiches to hand out, funds for school supplies, or money for field trips.  The problem is this isn't true.

Is poverty a disease of individuals with a simple cause-and-effect much like appendicitis or diabetes?  No, it is far more complicated and the causes are many.  While poverty's influence impacts individuals, it is families and communities that are actually impoverished and this is where we have to direct our attention.

There are successful models for addressing poverty but they are based on a public health paradigm.  What do I mean by this?  More complicated diseases are often not amenable to individual treatment because either the disease spreads too rapidly, it is not treatable in the conventional sense, or it is too expensive to treat individually. We have community water purification systems because many diseases are water-borne and it is more effective and less expensive to prevent diseases such as E. coli, typhoid or cholera than it is to treat them.  Think Walkerton.  The same is true for smallpox and polio, two diseases that were widespread, highly virulent and even deadly prior to the introduction of mass immunization programs.

This approach can also be used to address poverty.  One such initiative is the Banff-Ledbury neighbourhood's No Community Left Behind project.  This project directly involved members of the community to address their own needs.  Another similar initiative that is particularly dear to my heart is the Pathways to Education project.

Pathways to Education

Unlike what the Fraser Institute might have us believe, studies show that child poverty and failure in school are closely linked.  Pathways to Education is an initiative that addresses the economic and educational needs of poorer children.  And if I tell you that studies also show that better educated populations are healthier, then it shouldn't come as a surprise to hear that Pathways projects are often initiated by community health centres.  Pathways provides student tutoring, mentoring, bus transportation to school or lunch vouchers, and post-secondary scholarships.  High school graduation rates have more than doubled and the rate of post-secondary attendance in colleges or universities has tripled among Pathways participants.3

The Pathways model identifies needier communities and then links these communities to the school.  Families of participating students who live in geographically distinct communities sign contracts and are directly involved in the project.  This helps ensure community and family support for the students and the program.

Let me emphasize this point.  Pathways to Education is not a charity in the conventional sense.  It does not simply provide student resources such as tutoring services or bus tickets.  Rather Pathways is about developing relationships within and between members of the community, families and the school.  In fact, most Pathways services are provided by community volunteers.

If you want to do something right now to support Pathways to Education, simply click on this link and vote everyday until March 21.  If Pathways receives the most votes, it will win a $50,000 grant.

Teachers mean well when it comes to helping young people but few have any personal experience with poverty.  Still particularly among educators, there's no excuse for ignorance.


The views expressed in this post are personal opinions only.