Social Safety Net Failure Inevitable?
I’ve been thinking about an implication of Ruby Payne’s message from "A Framework for Understanding Poverty". She says among other things that people are locked in poverty because of a lack of resources only one of which is financial; that even if someone gets a job that provides the financial means to escape poverty, they will probably not escape because of other limited resources.
One of those resources is a mentor. One quote illustrates her perspective; "No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship." The implication of this statement is terrifying if true. If every person born in poverty needs a mentor to escape, then that puts an enormous burden on teachers but teachers will never be enough.
Is it even conceivable that to eliminate poverty every person wanting to escape must have a mentor from the middle or upper class?
The implication I’ve been thinking about is that people in poverty tend to have more babies than families from middle or upper class and as a result it would appear inevitable that a society be overtaken by poverty. All social safety nets should inevitably be overwhelmed.
One of those resources is a mentor. One quote illustrates her perspective; "No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship." The implication of this statement is terrifying if true. If every person born in poverty needs a mentor to escape, then that puts an enormous burden on teachers but teachers will never be enough.
Is it even conceivable that to eliminate poverty every person wanting to escape must have a mentor from the middle or upper class?
The implication I’ve been thinking about is that people in poverty tend to have more babies than families from middle or upper class and as a result it would appear inevitable that a society be overtaken by poverty. All social safety nets should inevitably be overwhelmed.
posted by complexspecificity | 7:44 PM
2 Comments:
In education classes now, they train teacher's simply to teach the material, listen, but don't get personally involved because that's dangerous. So how are teacher's even to be mentors to help people escape poverty if they are constantly trained that getting involved is dangerous, and against school policy, district policy, and state policy and could lose their job over it? humph...so frustrating. We are disconnecting ourself out of fear in a society overrun with legal lawsuits.
I don't understand the philosophy. Are they worried about lawsuits or is this an educational learning theory?
I once had a small grant to study student retention. The class I chose to study had a 45% retention rate. We tried several intervention strategies.
1. Let students do homework in groups of two or three. To encourage the formation of these study groups, I told them that if they would register their study group with me; I would accept a single copy of the homework and credit everyone in the group. Retention went up to 95% for the small numbers of groups that did register.
2. I took the students to the tutoring center and the staff demonstrated their services. We found that if the students went to the center as little as 5 hours per semester, the retention again went up to 95%.
3. We strongly encouraged all students to take a student success class. Retention for those students in other classes is consistently near 90%.
4. We didn’t have numbers to report, but the Student Services staff believed they had data that indicated that if a student had a job on campus, they were likely to be successful in class.
Our conclusion was that any relationship with someone currently at the college would significantly increase retention. Relationships are a strong driver for success.
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