There is a great deal of controversy over the issue of poverty in education.
Once again, public school was created to educate the children of the poor in order to level the playing field between the classes in America. It is however, important to recognize that poverty plays an extremely important role in the mis-education of children. That poverty is not financial, it is spiritual.
Intelligent activists who recall their impoverished past to prove the point that poverty plays an important role in education seem to not realize that they are a testament to the fact that financial poverty is not the issue. In fact, the opposite is true. Our financially impoverished parents impressed upon us the importance of getting a good education, which would give us the ability to rise up from the poverty in which they were entrenched. Education wasn’t something that was given, it was a necessity that was earned.
Spiritual poverty, the lack of belief in ones ability to achieve, is the poverty destroying our children. We have given our children so many fish that they no longer appreciate the gift or the fish. They do not understand the difficulty and complexity of obtaining the fish they reject daily because new fish will be provided for them without putting forth any effort.
Learning is hard work, life as an adult is even harder, yet we have made education so fun and easy that it is worthless, making our children feel worthless, creating feelings in adults that they are worth less than those who are “rich”.
Yes, the playing field must be level in order for every child to have the opportunity for success. However, keeping the field level takes hard work and that work must be done by the students in order for them to appreciate the game. We must stop feeling sorry for children of poverty and start educating them.
Intelligence is the reward of education, a diploma in an award. Somehow we’ve confused the two. The reality is, you appreciate what you work hard to l-earn.
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