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Can we talk about poverty? In many communities in America schools are the only places students can get something to eat. We know that academic performance cor
by smutticus 14y ago
Can we talk about poverty? In many communities in America schools are the only places students can get something to eat. We know that academic performance correlates closely with the economic conditions parents. So why don't we talk about it more?
Schools are in many ways just reflections of a society and its values. Schools don't exist in a vacuum, so comparing American schools to Finnish schools can not be done as an apples to apples comparison.
- penny500 14y ago"Can we talk about poverty? In many communities in America schools are the only places students can get something to eat." I've worked with inner city youths, and that is completely false. If that were true, we'd expect a very skinny poor population. Instead, a large percentage of America's poor are overweight.
- DividesByZero 14y agoA large percentage of the poor are overweight or obese because of the low nutritional value of cheap, readymade food.
- wildgift 14y agoI don't think that's the cause. I think that's just some middle class bias in the debate. I think the real reason is that food generally costs a lot less than it used to cost, relative to housing and other expenses. Poor people often know how to cook, out of necessity, and make the food taste better by retaining more of the fat, adding carbs like rice, and plenty of meat. Food is sustenance, culture, entertainment, and reward all in one experience. And the price is relatively low. If you have $10, you can dine very well if you can cook.
- arethuza 14y agoAny references to support that assertion? [NB Genuinely interested - not being snarky]
- ktsmith 14y agoThis completely ignores changes in lifestyle, elimination of physical education at school and other factors. My wife teaches at a school with about a 40% homeless population. Health issues including obesity are just as common at this school as the rest of the district. 100% of the children receive breakfast and lunch at the school and all are welcome to come back for dinner which a large percentage take advantage of. The school hasn't had PE in at least five years, and many of the kids will tell you flat out that when they are at home they sit around and watch tv.
- eli_gottlieb 14y agoNo, we can't talk about poverty. That requires critically examining the American fetishes for proprietarian, neoliberal capitalism and the inequality it drives. In fact, the problem is even deeper: it requires Americans to critically examine the cultural assumption that Life Itself is a competitive game to win or lose as individually as possible.
- psionski 14y agoAnyone in the world can tell you that Americans behave like animals. A friend of mine went to the U.S.A. and came back after he witnessed how they let a poor man die in front of the hospital because he didn't have health insurance, with full disregard of the Hippocratic oath (if they even have that thing over there). I bet he'll never visit again. Anyways, we'll just have to wait and see whether co-operation is more effective than competition. For now, it seems like competition is winning, but the question is at what price.
- eli_gottlieb 14y agoI wouldn't say like animals. Animals have all kinds of social arrangements, and in fact only some very few large predators or insects are ever entirely individualistic. It's just a society that has spent decades in the thrall of a bloody-stupid ideology, to the point that America is only now recovering the vocabulary to talk about its problems clearly.