Essay+on+lack+of+education
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Lack of education is root cause of poverty
A sad misconception pervades our city: that Rochester’s urban students cannot be educated until we have solved the problem of poverty. This is a convenient narrative because it lets everyone off the hook for poor educational results. All blame can be put on poverty. Unfortunately, for some this means blaming the children and their parents.
Any enterprise—or city—is in trouble when the dialogue revolves around the question “who’s at fault?” instead of “what’s the problem and how do we solve it?” Let’s get out of the blame game in which good teachers stuck in a bad system feel vilified, politicians duck for cover and people argue about the wrong things. Believing that poor children can’t learn merely leads to paralysis.
The root cause of poverty is lack of education. If you can’t read or do basic math, if you can’t show up for work and apply yourself, you will not have a job. You will be poor. Other actions may dent poverty, but the War on Poverty is 50 years old and the gains are few.
The clear path forward is to realize that the premise that poor children can’t be taught is wrong and to give our city’s children a good academic, social, behavioral and physical education right now. The human potential currently going to waste could be turned into the economic engine—one that would make our region the envy of the nation and demonstrate a better route to prosperity than building stadiums and other physical investments.
Fortunately, we citizens can take direct action. Good teaching is hard work; teaching children mired in poverty is even harder. To address the needs of these children requires a completely different structure or business model. Putting bandages on the current broken system is not working.