Actually, I’ve worked with a lot of kids who already understand this about their parents and deeply resentful about the world they’ve been forced in to. They are, however, less able to articulate those feelings and they come out sideways.
Well put.
Yeah, and I was kinda making that as an analogy as to how society expects the black community to shape up without giving it the tools to do so.
But you are correct, parents who do not value education will have children who do not value education who then will go on to be parents who do not value education.
I don’t see how to expect them to break that cycle without some sort of help or input from the greater society.
Even if a parent takes the advice to heart, and does their best to follow it, if they themselves do not have a good enough education to assist their child academically, nor a good enough economic position to assist them in providing them with a safe place to study and sleep, nutritious foods to fuel their growing bodies and minds, or the ability to take them to the library or study sessions, then their best may not be nearly enough to make up for the factors stacked against them.
I’m not sure what your last pronoun refers to. The poorly articulated feelings or the student themself?
Anyway, do you fault the kid for having “bad” parents? Does having “bad” parents entitle the kid to having more support from society or not?
Not that your language excluded this, but I think it pays to remind ourselves that there are parents for whom ‘not valuing education’ doesn’t adequately state the case.
Among impoverished communities there is often some version of “come up above your raisin’,” implying that you’ve become educated and successful and forgotten from whence you came.
This is often actively discouraged, largely because the success of one member of the community can be perceived as making the majority of the community feel even more “less than” than some of them might already feel.
Meaning: not supporting higher/formal education isn’t always a benign or passive process. It can also be malevolent and active.
These aren’t the actions of good, healthy, stable, secure, and functional individuals, parents, families, or communities, but … there it is anyway.
Does that ring true to anybody in today’s political climate ?
And because these problems are so complex, multifactoral, entrenched, and tightly coupled, I think it’s valuable and important to take a multidisciplinary approach and hit on all fronts.
To invoke these mass shootings as an example … one side of the spectrum wants everything on the table … including, and particularly, firearm legislation.
The other side tends to focus on every other issue – typically violent video games and Hollywood TV and movie violence.
But not the guns.
Exceptional people find their way out of Stygian poverty. More may find their way out today than 25 or 50 years ago. Given @thickpancreas’ approach, I believe incrementally more would find their way out.
But I’d advocate for less incrementalism and more holistic and sweeping changes. Large ships may turn slowly but their captains still tend to crank the wheel all the way to one side or the other regardless 
But this is always the case.
I’ve spent most of my life in lower wage jobs. Some of my peers were lifers, that’s what they were going to do.
They would make fun of the others who were working their way through college. Because they were jealous that they were trying to better themselves.
This really isn’t a black/white community/culture thing. This is a human thing, or at the very least, an American thing.
I think you and I are in violent agreement here.
I’m careful to relate most of these issues to poverty and/or lack of formal education above any other markers or distinguishing characteristics.
I don’t ever remember people with undergraduate degrees similarly making fun of those pursuing their Master’s, or those in their Master’s programs mercilessly and caustically hectoring those in a PhD program 
[though I think a line could probably be drawn where PhD candidates tease the living shit out of Post-Doc types ]
I don’t know how uniquely American this one is, though it’s an interesting question. Any members from other countries want to enlighten me ?
No, I don’t fault the kid for having bad parents. And no, I don’t believe having bad parents entitles the kid to more support from society, they should get the same amount of support from society.
But the entire point of effective social safety nets is to support those who through no fault of their own got dealt a bad hand and need a little help getting back up. That’s why there are school lunch programs for poor families, for example. Surely you don’t begrudge that sort of assistance.
I would have to disagree, I think that, if someone is disadvantaged through no fault of their own, then it is in society’s best interest to provide extra support. Especially when that cycle began through no fault of their own in the first place.
Without that support, they will just go on to be bad parents themselves, and then have kids who are disadvantaged, who will go on to be bad parents…
Punishing kids for the sins of their ancestors has been an anathema to a free society, and yet, it is something that we do anyway.
Do you feel that a kid with severe mental disabilities should get more support from society as a kid who is healthy?
Does that change at all if it were due to their parent’s drug use during pregnancy?
Moderating
And what did he say to deserve that crack. Tone it down. No warning–yet.
I’m not trying to play gotcha here, but I did choose my words carefully in my last post.
I didn’t say how much support all kids should receive, only that they should all be entitled to the SAME support. For instance, I wouldn’t mind seeing all students have equal access to the same school provided lunches and school issued uniforms.
Oh please, lol
Thinking back to when my kids attended schools, the last thing most of those entitled twats needed was a free lunch. The price of student cars in the parking lot shamed those driven by school staff. But there were some few kids who really did need a free meal program. I wonder how much stigma was attached to that and whether it would have been better for everyone to get the same lunch and wear the same clothes. Still would not change the vast economic disparity. Kids are very good at signaling their socio-economic standing. What would be the chief objective in attempting to provide the kind of school atmosphere you’re suggesting where everyone eats the same lunch and wears the same school jacket?
I think what you’re getting at here may be key in our general disagreement on this issue. As I mentioned to Quicksilver, I think we all should be entitled to amd have access to a social security system. How large that system should be we can discuss further (I offered a school specific example to him).
But I don’t believe a single mother who keeps having kids she can’t afford is entitled to ever increasing social support. As an example, each family might receive 10,000$ a year in social support. That number doesn’t increase if you decide to have more than one child, so if you want more than one kid you are responsible for providing the extra income to raise those kids. (I shlould add, I just pulled that 20k figure out of my butt)
Uniforms do help alleviate some of the stigma and status issues you describe, and indeed create a more cohesive student body. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve also seen kids bullied for wearing the same shoes to school every day of the week…in a relatively low income community where probably none of those kids could justify owning more than one pair of shoes.
Okay, but does it help improve outcomes?
I’ve no doubt there are myriad studies that suggest pros & cons.
As expected: Results are mixed.
If you are for UBI, UHC, and universal education k-12 and beyond, then we are in violent agreement.
Settling a floor where all can work to climb and build from is all I ever wanted.
They say that money can’t buy happiness. But what it can buy is the physical security necessary to prevent unhappiness.
What the line of support is, I don’t know. Personally, I advocate for a UBI that is lower than most of my liberal brethren, where I feel that one should be kept in health and dignity, but very little more.
If you put a floor in, where the absolute least of us still lives a dignified, if spartan life, with the tools and resources available for them to better themselves to create a better life, then 90% of the things discussed become irrelevant or at least less necessary.
As far as the point of having babies to get a bigger check, I’m pretty sure that’s not the way it has worked in a quarter of a century, since “welfare reform” during the Clinton era.
What is a family? Is one person a family? One person with a kid? Is a married couple, and does it matter if they are straight? Do they have to have a kid?
Would you take extra kids away from parents who cannot afford them?
I’m not actually asking you, or expecting you to answer these questions here and now, I am just saying that these are all questions that would need to be answered in order to implement such a program.
Along with uniforms, providing laundry services as well. Doesn’t do much to remove the stigma of poverty by providing a uniform if it is obvious that it has been worn every day this week, without being washed.
Seems reasonable to me, I must say.
Have the students do the laundry themselves at school in rotating shifts, i say.
Its getting off topic, but one of the schools I worked in had a never ending problem with students trashing the bathrooms and common areas. By the end of the day, there were usually only one or two bathrooms still open because the rest had been locked up. Another school I worked in made the students clean the bathrooms and common areas themselves in rotating shifts. I think you can guess which students were far more respectful of the building and its resources.
Now, that school was actually in poorer, rougher neighborhood, and the simple fact that the students themselves were accountable for maintaining the facilities completely changed the culture surrounding respect of the building. That is the type of accountability I want to see held up throughout society, though I will say I recognize that doing so with building maintenance is a comparatively simple example.