Poverty Affects Student Education Catrina Smith COMM/215 August 4, 2010 Dr. Spann Poverty Affects Student Education What is poverty and how can we limit it in student’s educational success? According to the U. S. Census Bureau, “more than 11 million kids in the US live below the poverty line and do not have the basic supplies that they need to succeed. ” Students all around the world are faced with many problems in their life at some point or another. Teenagers, sometimes have the difficulty learning and adapting to certain situations.
This can lead to the problem with poverty and the ways in which the students have struggling efforts in the progression towards his or her education. “People in poverty face challenges virtually unknown to those in middle class or wealth; challenges from both obvious and hidden sources. The reality of being poor brings out a survival mentality and turns opportunities taken for granted by everyone else” (Payne). Poverty affects everyone who is around those living in poverty.
Students’ achievement in the classroom shows that a child’s learning success is being affected when students are unchallenged, unmotivated, and belittled by their peers and community. When students are faced with general patterns of poverty, their education becomes a factor. Poverty is the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. The general problems with poverty progress around the challenging attributes of the teacher to push the student in to learning.
When students are not necessarily forced but are more engaged and active by the teacher’s will to teach them the skills they will need to succeed in their education, it could help benefit their process of learning. In contrast to those living in the poverty stricken conditions, these particular children may not have the proper guidance to strive them to want to learn. This is where the teachers begin to play a major role in the student’s achievement. An article by Haycock addresses issues related to poverty and the achievement gap through research conducted by The Education Trust in the late 1990s.
They questioned both children and adults on what they suspect are causes of this achievement gap. One comment among those made by the children was, “what hurts us more is that you teach us less. ” Haycock concludes: “…we take the students who have less to begin with and then systematically give them less in school. ” What also matters is effective teaching. Teachers must delegate their gift of teaching these students to continue to work through their hard living conditions. By being challenged by the teachers, the students can find that they have someone to push them in the right path of their educational success.
Furthermore, teachers may find that their job has become harder due to the time that students dealing with poverty may need in the classroom. The point of poverty is not necessarily the child’s fault, yet teachers must be aware of their student’s financial situations and their history in order to better the student. One of the main goals to limit the effects of poverty in a student’s education should be for the teacher to make certain that all students are able to achieve. Teachers should be obligated to challenge the student’s ability to learn. This could bring forth action in the general pattern of poverty.
Motivation is the key element in a child’s learning ability. Student’s living under poverty stricken conditions need the proper guidance from an adult figure in their life. When parents or even the teachers of these students do not take on that role to offer help with the students, it could lead the students to thinking negative about things. For example, if you do not understand how something relates to your goals, you will not care about that thing. In comparison, if an adult cannot see the relevance of the material covered in a meeting, and has no desire to score political points, he or she will tune out of the meeting.
Which is the same as if a child does not understand how knowing the elements of a periodic table will help to address the concerns of his or her life for future references, and he or she is not particularly interested in pleasing the teacher; therefore, the student will also do the same by dropping out of the course. Because we do not want children to be motivated solely by a desire to please the teacher, what parents or the adults in the child’s life need to address is how to make the content of the curriculum fit into the concerns of the child.
This will better the child’s ability to learn and possibly produce better scores from these students. Additionally, many of the students who attend high school have dealt with the problem of poverty. The high school that my daughter attends is made up of predominately African American students, who were in middle class or below the poverty line and were thrown into the school because most of the other higher standing schools did not accept these students based on the history of their educational level.
Generally, students in poverty attend school each day, not particularly just to learn but also to engage in the social life with their friends to receive a free meal, based on the criticism from other teachers. Most of these students seem to be so far behind in their education compared to a student who is not faced with these living conditions. “Each year, increasing numbers of children are entering schools with needs from circumstances, such as poverty, that schools are not prepared to meet” (Pellino, teach-nology. com).
Educators need to work together in focusing on the student’s qualities, coping skills, and supports that help children survive in a challenging environment of the schools. These children need our help if they are to adapt successfully, despite the expected negative outcomes and their circumstances. Therefore, motivation in these students’ education would eventually bring change towards their success in the classroom. We already know that poverty exists and that there are a countless amounts of people who are struggling in their education from their unplanned situation.
Poverty is not a pleasant subject. We all wish it would go away but we also must know that poverty will never disappear on its own. It can be limited with efforts from the parents, teachers, peers and community of these students. We need to focus on their learning by challenging, motivating, and assisting the poverty stricken students to help them overcome these challenges. Their education is likely the one chance to break the poverty cycle and escape. Just because they are poor does not mean that they are unable to succeed.
Being in poverty should actually be the best reason for them to want to succeed. References Payne, Ruby K. (2005). A framework for understanding poverty. Highlands, Tex. Aha! Process print. Pellino, Karen M. (2007). The effects of poverty on teaching and learning. Retrieved form http://www. teach-nology. com/Articles/teaching/poverty/ Haycock, K. (2001). Educational leadership. Closing the achievement gap, 58(6). Retrieved from http://www. leadersroundtable. org/site/images/stories/Homework/closing%20the%20gap.
