The people I deal with in my literacy work are almost exclusively very poor adults. Very poor. I’ve had people sleeping on my couches, have passed along most of my kid’s clothes and provided all kinds of other support as I could. Many of their kids have gone on to make great improvements. Not all, not even most, but solidly many, and after having dealt with such large numbers over the decades, I have become convinced that the way to help the kids is to first help the parents. Making sure that parents have solid reading and math skills is a giant, giant step, and I also believe that when the parents are fully literate and numerate in time to help their kids with their educations, then the kids do much better in school all the way. Some people might be surprised by how much of a challenge literacy is among the very poor. I think it’s important to close the gap in steps because I think that’s realistic.
It is not preordained, how could it be? Have a parent who encourages and believes in you despite all the odds, and you can end up like Dr. Ben Carson, a pioneer in neurosurgery. Have parents who tell you that you have no chance whatsoever, and that’s likely to be your future.
I don’t believe everyone has equal opportunities, every single person has a different background, different experiences and different burdens to carry. From how they were raised, schooled, how their brain functions, their ability, motivation, strengths and weaknesses, confidence, depression, family unit, friends, genetics, whatever. Two kids from the same family could have completely different opportunities. My teachers didn’t even know I existed, they rarely talked to me or required homework. I never studied, my education was pretty bad. But I read all the time, and did a great deal of math at home. You don’t have to have teachers who care in order to become educated, especially in these days of the internet. You are the only one who has to care.
How can anyone know what “most people” think? It’s all generalizations and assumptions.
Accumulation of wealth is partially luck. I’d call it “absence of bad luck”, which can tank the best plan and hard work.
@katliamom the beginning of this was about how those who have don’t seem to feel bad enough about it, or guilty or what have you…
I feel like a lot of this discussion centers around the word “privilege”. In recent years the word privilege has been used in very negative connotations, in my opinion.
The premise of the article, whether you agree or disagree, started off reasonable. Where it took the turn to negativity for me was:
“people in England have the decency to feel guilty.”
That says to me that if you have achieved this 20% status you must feel guilty or you are not a decent person.
I’ve achieved a lot of things and I have no intentions of feeling guilty for it.
I’m not sure katliamom has read the same article as linked. It is filled with derision about lack of guilt and whom is the correct group to blame. Some salient quotes:
I’ve never thought of it that way, but I think that is very wise.
I disagree with his stance on on 529 savings plans. If I made $200K a year I would cash flow my D’s education. Since I don’t I had to plan in advance and save. Granted 529 plans are not something the lower income families can usually benefit from, but they are huge benefit to the middle class who cannot expect financial aid.
“Some people might be surprised by how much of a challenge literacy is among the very poor.”
I believe it. One of my best friends taught early intervention pre-K in a low income section of a major city. She said the kids she had in her classes (ages 4-5) would come in not even knowing what a book is, how it worked, how to open it, turn the pages. They hadn’t been read to AT ALL.
Many people don’t have the advantages that we do. That’s the privilege we have. The advantages that allow us to recognize and capitalize on chance and opportunities we see, to have that hope. They are absent in many places but they are and will affect our country. Collectively, they need to be understood and tackled, not blamed on “folks being lazy”.
I believe so passionately in that understanding and tackling that I’ve spent thousands of hours over the years doing that. However, there are some people who actually are lazy and unwilling to learn/work. Fortunately (?) there are enough people who are ready, willing, and eager that even a few committed people can make a very large difference. At the basic literacy level, most American adults with a high school diploma can do a great deal to help.
I agree with that. People can recognize the opportunities and advantages they’ve had, their near misses, the bullets they’ve dodged, while acknowledging the work they have done and the choices that they have made along with the way. It’s not either you must think one way or the other, people are complex. Assigning guilt and blame to any generic group of people because it suits ones political manipulating doesn’t help solve anything. It’s just demagoging.
@fractalmstr do you have some suggestions? (I am not being sarcastic here I am really asking)
@alh – the author of that piece could have simplified it down to “a long-term decline in the United States’ top marginal tax rate”. OK, he wants to raise taxes.
Some people talked a page or two back about the bottom 20% and how there will always be a bottom 20%. That’s true and I think the author of the NYT piece should have focused more on the growing disparity of wealth in this country. It is really less about the top 20% and bottom 20%, as that will be and HAS ALWAYS been true, by definition. What is troublesome for our country and the direction we are headed in is that growing disparity and the increasingly difficult task of improving one’s economic foothold if you are in one of the lower rungs.
@busdriver11 I’m surprised you rise to the disingenuous derision in this article. Criticism about $30,000 a year high schools sounds a bit rich coming from an Englishman, seeing as it was his nation that popularized (if not invented) posh boarding schools that still feed his country’s power elites.
It’s true that some Americans think themselves as the 99% when in fact their income places them in, the let’s say, the 75th percentile. But that’s mainly because the bottom has been falling out of America’s economy so fast that it’s honestly hard to keep up.
“What is troublesome for our country and the direction we are headed in is that growing disparity and the increasingly difficult task of improving one’s economic foothold if you are in one of the lower rungs.”
@doschicos – I would also add that what’s troublesome is the vile, hateful dismantling of what little social safety net there is – while giving tax cuts to that 1% and the companies that employ them.
Now we are edging into politics…inevitably I suppose.
True – but how do you discuss poverty, the shrinking middle class and grossly underemployed working class or the chasm between the upper 20% and even the 50%. without discussing politics?
I do not believe that the poor in America have gotten lazier. Or feel more entitled. I DO believe decades of very specific POLICIES have hampered their efforts to get ahead – while also accelerating the growth of incomes for those at the very tip of the pyramid.
On this board, I suppose you don’t. Rules is rules!
Yea. So I will say only this: What good is upper middle class guilt? Guilt doesn’t feed families or pay college tuition. And those of you who are totally self-made: congratulations! May there be millions and millions more of you in the near future 
(I am the daughter of a self-made man, so I understand the accomplishment.)