Childhood poverty significantly limits potentials and opportunities

Childhood poverty compromises every aspect of the lives of those so affected, as they try to make their way in the world that is very often unforgiving of those who don’t fit the pre-cast mold set up by the ever-elusive ‘they’.  In essence, there’s a failure to thrive.

The label ‘failure to thrive’ was assigned to me when I was an infant. In my late 20s, I learned that it was still applied, as part of my ‘medical condition’; being undeweight, often a function of cerebral palsy and galloping metabolism that sucks up calories faster than I can take them in. 

As to children in poverty, failure to thrive is often impacted by spotty nutrition, with children and families relying on food banks and the like to top up requirements each month when funds get low. Failure to thrive is evidenced in school performance; a hungry child cannot concentrate. A child worried about being laughed at because he’s wearing jeans that are dirty and too short cannot effectively learn. He’s a victim of circumstances out of his control. 

Lessons in empathy need to be part of the daily curriculum so that those children who don’t experience such struggles are made aware of the needs of schoolmates who work and play around them. Across the ages, civility is waning and we need to pull it out of the gutter, dust it off and build lessons around it. Where better than in the classroom, at the beginning of the journey of formal education?

A dilemma for those who want to help is how do we help and who do we help? We tend to  take a broad brush to the issue of poverty, putting Group A over here and Group B over there.  We decide, without benefit of facts or family history, who is deserving of our largesse and who may be less so. Hmm. Here’s the thing — people are people. We all cry. We all laugh. We all live. We all die.

Children living in poverty are at risk on so many levels aside from what the mainstream sees as the obvious - food insecurity, inadequate housing and lapses in effective parenting from adults in their world. Lapses in parenting may well contribute to school absenteeism.

Being forced to live on the fringes during their formative years, during their school years, from K to 12, impacts a child in ways that may leave lifelong scars. That’s the reality of their world but there are so many among us who can help change outcomes by getting involved in our community with attention given to those who need us most. Call your local elementary school and offer to be a reading buddy. Your contribution will help boost literacy scores. Boosting literacy helps take a bite out of poverty. Think about that.

In today’s world, yesterday’s curriculum isn’t doing the job; we need to provide students with a more ‘in the world’ hands-on approach to learning. Certainly, sitting down and listening to instructors impart their knowledge about particular subjects needs to be part of the process but it could be expanded to incorporate exposure to  material beyond the pages of a book, or the information on a chalk board. Is it boredom that’s keeping children out of school? Layered learning might be the solution. Learning that’s designed with input from the students. Learning that is more inclusive of the broader community; inviting them in to teach. To learn themselves.

Young people living in poverty who are of working age, often miss school so they may earn money via part-time jobs to top up the family pot of funds required to just get by. Many families come to depend on their teenagers’ part time jobs to put extra food in the cupboards and cover costs of school supplies or special ‘school recommended’ sneakers or jackets.  Some families simply cannot afford any extras. Most may not even have a savings account that has sufficient funds to cover an unexpected emergency. That’s the reality of poverty for so many.

Making the school curriculum more relevant from the outset, beginning in 1st grade, may well be the best way to ensure a continuity of attendance. Engaging students in activities physically, intellectually and emotionally will ensure the creation of long-term memories with a skill set that will ensure that they are able to get off the poverty wheel going nowhere and establish themselves in careers they love with jobs that will be fulfilling with opportunities for advancement.

Childhood poverty is real. It is a problem. It can be made less so with greater and sustained involvement of those in the community who have the time and resources to make a difference. Could you be such a person?

Carla MacInnis Rockwell is a freelance writer and disability rights advocate living outside Fredericton, NB with her aging Australian silky terrier and a rambunctious Maltese. She can be reached via email at carmacrockwell@xplornet.ca 

Reading, writing and manners, oh my!

Photo: Tyler Anderson/Postmedia News

       Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in great measure, the laws depend. Manners are what vex or smooth, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us . . . . According to their quality, they aid morals, or they destroy them. [Edmund Burke, British Statesman]

I agree with Sue Rickards’ recent comments that “schools must teach life, work and academic skills by encouraging teachers and students to take more responsibility for their own education.”

The cookie-cutter model doesn’t work; it never did and it never will. Though I’ve never taught in the formal 4 walls box with the sit down and listen to me theme, I have taught ‘out in the world’ via hands on learning, primarily with intellectually challenged children and young adults. Today, my teaching involves online text based guidance of parents of children with challenges to daily living. I also mentor young adults with disability, mostly young women with cerebral palsy. 

  Ms. Rickards’ leading comment “must teach life …” is the hook. The key. Teaching about life is going to be the way to reach students so that they will be inspired to learn the readin’ and writin’ components of academia. Part of life teaching was lost when vocational training programs were dropped from the curriculum — we need to bring them back. They’re critical to the sustainability of all that book learning that we hold as so important. Learning how to do basic home repairs. Critical! Learning how to make a grocery list, how to budget, how to shop for the best deals. Critical! They involve developing good communication skills, the ability to co-operate effectively. They also involve reading and writing. It’s all part of the same package — life and living IS learning.

In Japan, as example, children don’t take exams until fourth grade. The first 3 years of their schooling is focused on establishing good manners, which invariably contribute to good character. Those two building blocks must be solidly in place before any substantive book learning or lecture learning begins. 

Being reminded of the importance of manners and character building for children in kindergarten, I recalled the case of a teacher in the United States who failed her entire grade one class, being of the view that they lacked the maturity to sit down and listen; they were disruptive to the entire class and the teacher was spending more time correcting behaviour of a few than teaching the group. The majority of the youngsters did not have the basics of numbers and letters, begging the question - where were the parents/caregivers during that early learning phase? Teachers were left to teach manners and the value of caring and sharing as well as do sheet work, teach numbers and letters and basics of early reading. Children who struggled through without establishing a solid grounding in manners and good conduct are now adults who are still struggling; frustrated by the demands of high school, struggling in the work place, struggling in relationships with spouses or signficant others.

We don’t get a do-over and those people who are still floundering with unfulfilled lives still have an opportunity to correct course; that is, if they have the fortitude/get up and go to do it. Re-evaluating what’s important in your day to day is one way of making the decision to change course. Replacing the lust for tech toys with a commitment to taking an night class is a start. Pleading not enough money or no money is, dare I say, an easy out. How many cups ofcoffee did you buy today? Multiply that by 5 days. By 7 days. How many times did you eat fast food this week? Calculate the cost of a single night course that appeals to your interests and aptitudes. You do the math. You make the choice — a choice that may well change your life and open opportunities that are currently lost to you.

Adults in the world of a child who instill in them the value of please and thank you, paying attention, being respectful of others are providing those children with tools that will allow them to make more solid choices as they mature into who they are trying to be and who they will ultimately be, as they take their place in the community. 

Children who are allowed, yes allowed, to run roughshod over the rules of fair play and be disrespectful to those who are charged with teaching them are a challenge to everyone in their world. Parents who may have unwittingly set the stage for the behaviour, throw up their hands and remove themselves from responsibility. Hmm. There has to be accountability. And people, let’s be very clear. It begins in the home.

Carla MacInnis Rockwell is a freelance writer and disability rights advocate living outside Fredericton, NB with her aging Australian silky terrier and a rambunctious Maltese. She can be reached via email at carmacrockwell@xplornet.ca