At 16:57 25/10/2013, Ed wrote:
Keith: Where Stephanie Mencimer is uninformed is that (see her last
sentence) poverty doesn't doesn't affect the intellectual development of
children. What does affect it is when parents don't talk or read much or
when there are no books in the house, and so forth. In terms of oxygen,
energy and food, the brain is given top priority. A person has to be at
the extreme edge of starvation then all the other organs are failing
before the brain is affected.
Ed: I don't disagree, Keith, but nor do I fully agree. I was a depression
baby and spent the first ten years of my life in poverty. We had no books,
no radio much of the time, and there was no inspirational conversation. We
moved all over western Canada because my father was forever looking for
work. Then along came WWII. We had a steady income because my dad joined
the army. We lived in one place for about four years and the school I went
to had good teachers and a library. And good times continued for two or
three decades after the war. What I'm saying is that I believe societal
and family circumstances have a great deal to do with the success or
failure of children. If the depression had continued and the war hadn't
come along my adult life would have been very different than it was.
Agreed. No doubt your life would have been different. But your
intellectual potential, set well before puberty, would have given you a
distinguished role.
Keith: If the teaching unions weren't so rigid about credentialism, then
you could be sure that private schools would invade the poverty struck
parts of America just as they have done (and continue to do) in the
poorest parts of China, India and Africa (where the poverty is at a deeper
level than the poorest of America). This would give a chance, at least, to
the children, of breaking out of the trap (though they would still need
parents who were motivated enough to spare a few pennies for the tuition).
Ed: Teachers can make a huge difference in kid's lives. In the primary
grades, it's not so much what they are required, by educational
authorities, to teach the kids, it's more about how they befriend and
treat them.
Agreed. I think that primary school teachers are much more important than
secondary school teachers. However, what happens in England is that the
worst teachers end up in the schools in the poverty areas. A few good
teachers go these schools voluntarily but this cannot compenstate. However,
if free schools were allowed (free schools means state supported but
otherwise independent) or private schools were allowed to operate, then
some sort of impression could be made. There are many older, retired people
who'd love to teach but are not prepared to go to teacher training college
for a year.
Some of my teachers were lovely people, others were brutes. A problem we
now seem to have in eastern Canada is that of too many teachers and not
enough teaching jobs. I know a few people who have teaching credentials
but can't find teaching jobs. Some of them would make excellent teachers.
We're short of science and maths teachers. Also headteachers of secondary
schools. Despite high salaries, one half of the jobs aren't filled in a year.
Keith
At 14:19 25/10/2013, you wrote:
From Mother Jones:
CHART: Welfare Reform Is Leaving More In Deep Poverty
By <http://www.motherjones.com/authorss/stephanie-mencimer>Stephanie
Mencimer
| Wed Oct. 23, 2013 3:00 AM PDT
The economy is picking up in some parts of the country, but that hasn't
translated into any new serious efforts to help those suffering the most
hardship. In fact, for those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder,
life may be getting even harder. A
<http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=4034>new report from the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) looks at cash benefits
provided under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
program, commonly known as "welfare." It finds that the value of monthly
cash benefits that make up the fragile safety net for the poorest
families with children has continued to decline steadily since the
program was "reformed" in 1996.
Back then, benefits weren't exactly generous, but they did manage to keep
a whole lot of kids out of really deep poverty. Today, those benefits are
almost nonexistent. The lucky few who are able to get cash assistance
aren't getting enough to
<http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/10/welfare-reform-cbpp-deep-poverty>pay
rent or keep the lights on in most states, and the value of the benefits
has declined precipitously since 1996even more so since the recessioon
sttarted. According to CBPP, there is not a state in the country whose
welfare benefits are enough to lift a poor single mother with two kids
above 50 percent of the poverty line, or about $9700 a year. In many
southern states, TANF doesn't provide enough money to get a poor family
much above 10 percent of the poverty line. What's especially troubling
about these figures is that, as CBPP reports, TANF benefits are often the
only form of cash assistance poor families receive. They may be getting
food stamps, which definitely help their situations, but you can't
<http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/10/welfare-reform-cbpp-deep-poverty>buy
diapers or pay the rent with food stamps.
People like President Bill Clinton and then-Speaker of the House Newt
Gingrich claimed they'd be doing welfare recipients a favor in the 1990s
when they reformed the welfare program to impose work requirements and
make it more difficult for people to get benefits. The idea was that
welfare recipients were just lazy and that their government checks were
keeping them from working, making them dependent on the government. When
the reform legislation passed, with Clinton's signature, some people in
the administration quit in protest, arguing that cutting off cash
assistance for poor families would push millions of children into
poverty. That didn't happen, at least not right away. But funding for the
TANF block grant hasn't increased since 1996, meaning that in real terms,
what the country spends to help poor families in the program has fallen
30 percent overall since welfare was "reformed," and benefit levels have
fallen even more in some states that cut benefits after the financial
crisis started in 2007. Not surprisingly, since 1996, the number of
families with children living in extreme povertythat is, on $2 a day oor
lessââhas
<http://www.npc.umich.edu/publications/poolicy_briefs/brief28/policybrief28.pdf>gone
up nearly 130 percent.
The
<http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/10/welfare-reform-cbpp-deep-poverty>US
Census Bureau reports that the number of Americans suffering significant
hardships, such as having utilities cut off, getting evicted, or
suffering food shortages, has escalated sharply during the recession.
Between 2005 and 2011, nearly 7 million additional people were unable to
make a mortgage or rent payment, suggesting that as the nation's
last-ditch safety net for people in really dire straits, TANF, is not
working. Given that science is now showing just
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-21/stress-of-childhood-poverty-may-have-long-effect-on-brain.html>how
damaging the stress of poverty is to children and their health and
intellectual development, maybe it's finally time for welfare reform to
be reformed in a way that gives poor kids a fair shot at a decent future.
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