I would uninvent student poverty. After teaching for twenty plus years I have come to the conclusion that society should put much more into making sure children’s basic needs are met in order for them to be successful. We have made some progress since the Pandemic when California at least, realized that giving all students free access to food at school is a really good idea if you want to improve learning. What would happen if we could end childhood poverty?
Many of my students that struggle are fighting an invisible enemy. They are working long hours to help pay bills, living in crowded noisy living conditions, and often times commuting great distances each day, just for the opportunity to go to school. After a few weeks of this, they get worn out, and begin to lose focus in class, fall behind and sometimes drop out. It is a waste of human capital and sets up a lot of kids for failure later in life, due to no fault of their own.
Our school and district at least has really tried to make strides in offering basic wellness services to students: peer counseling, extra counselors, a wellness center, turkey’s on Thanksgiving, and so on and so forth. I am not a big proponent of socialism so I am not saying pure Socialism is the way forward, but meeting basic needs of students should be more of a priority. If we can spend trillions of dollars on: wars, prisons, and foreign aid, why can’t we make our kids more of a priority? After all, they will be the ones we entrust with the world when we get older….
Thanks for reading The Life Long Education Blog. I hope you have a most excellent day or evening! Check our some of my other posts if you have a moment!
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What are your thoughts on this?