There is this scientific concept of "learned helplessness" - it applies to fleas, and it definitely applies to humans. If you've ever watched an upper-middle cl

There is this scientific concept of "learned helplessness" - it applies to fleas, and it definitely applies to humans. If you've ever watched an upper-middle class housewife crumble in the wake of a divorce, you know it's true. If we are the average of our 5 closest friends/family members, that we spend the most time with, then kids born in poverty are born DOOMED. Unless something intercedes. "Something" must be more than just giving them money, by the way. Two married friends of mine met in Teach for America. Unlike just about everyone else, they kept doing it. She taught in a public school in DC, he taught in a charter. (Charter schools are drastically better than the public ones, but still horrendous by any lower-middle-class bar.) Her classroom didn't just not have books... it didn't have power. That's right: no lights. There was enough electricity between two adjourning classrooms to power ONE box fan in the summer. That means only one classroom could have a 60-watt lightbulb or a fan. If that is the situation you grew up in, if that is the situation you saw at school, do you really think you would believe the crazy skinny white lady up front telling you that if you stayed in school, you could succeed? No. You wouldn't. You'd have to be stupid to believe one woman against everything your experience, and your eyes, tells you: that you are doomed. That the only people you know who make any money, who have any chance, are drug dealers. The teacher telling you this can't be trusted - she's poor, too, and stupid maybe, if she's stuck trying to teach a bunch of wasted, doomed kids like you. You can quote studies all you like that show that people in poverty aren't trying hard enough. But they mean nothing without the context of the rest of their lives.