Sunday, June 6, 2010

Kozol

Question: hyperlink
Why do we punish children for being poor? Why are opportunities for going to preschool, having art, music, a safe place to play, a place to use the bathroom or having a nurse available in the school if a child is ill, all absent for these children? Why are we not preparing our children for a a strong, successful future?

There have been studies (www.highscope.org/Content.asp?ContentId=3
Perry Preschool Project/High Scope) that show that a child who is born into poverty and is at risk of failing school, when given the opportunity to attend preschool, these children have a greater chance of holding a job and have higher earnings, they are less likely to commit a crime, and have a greater chance of graduating high school than someone who has not attended preschool. If this is true, why do we deny these children this opportunity?

I feel that we are setting these children up for failure. The article talks about how high students are not taking classes to prepare for college, rather sewing and hairdressing. They are learning jobs skills that will not help these children to move ahead in life but to continue the cycle of working the same low paying jobs as their parents and eventually their own children will follow the same cycle. History will keep repeating itself.

I feel that these children are receiving one message and that is they are not worth the time, money or resources. If the government can't help these children, then how can they help themself?

2 comments:

  1. Why do we punish children for being poor? Because we can. They have the least power so they end up with the smallest piece of the pie. What's surprising is that we as a nation continue to be surprised by poor outcomes for these children when we continue to invest so little in them.

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  2. The exisiting system obviously fails to provide equal educational opportunities. I agree with your conclusion.

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