(NAME-MCE) The most disadvantaged children go to the worst schools
Herrin, Melissa Jane
mherr4 at uis.edu
Thu Mar 6 22:31:31 EST 2008
I found this article to be very familiar with my life and interaction with children and the
educational system. My goal is to become a teacher and have a “good” life. I want to be a
teacher so I can help students become anything they want to be. However it breaks my heart to
hear that by the time a poorer child is 22 months old they have fallen behind a with a more
privileged background. Yet this is the sad truth. I see it everyday, from people in my
community and from people in my family. This is not a race issues because poverty can affect any
race. After I reach my goal of becoming a teacher my new goal will be to change my student’s
lives. I want to teach my students that no matter where they came from they can do anything they
set their mind to. Education is a tool, to help build success. I want my students to reach out
to the community and disadvantage people and show them we can make a difference.
I still don’t understand why people with fewer advantages receive fewer advantages. This does
not deal with education but it deals with the fact people with fewer disadvantages receive fewer
advantages. For example my mother is 52 years old and is disabled and has not worked in twenty
years. It’s not that she doesn’t want to it’s that she can’t. Her disability will not allow
her to work. Therefore my mother has no income and has to live on disability and social
security. My mother lives in poverty and I can’t do anything to help her right now because I am
a student and have no means to help her. Recently I found out that my mother could not receive
any type of life insurance. Therefore when my mother dies I will have to figure out how I will
pay for her funeral. This is just my personal example of how people with fewer advantages are
given fewer advantages.
The educational system is the same way students who come from poorer backgrounds are given fewer
advantages from the start. It shouldn’t be this way education should be one of the social
institutions that do not have prejudice against one group. I don’t have the answer to this
problem but I am going to start with the students. I Will not be able to fix up the building or
buy new computers but I teach my students that through education anything and evrything is
possible.
-----Original Message-----
From: name-mce-bounces at nameorg.org on behalf of Paul C. Gorski
Sent: Wed 3/5/2008 10:00 AM
To: mcp at edchange.org; name-mce at nameorg.org; rs at criticalteach.org
Subject: (NAME-MCE) The most disadvantaged children go to the worst schools
To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site,
go to
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/03/welfare.socialexclusion
'The most disadvantaged children go to the worst schools'
Andrew Sparrow, senior political correspondent, talks to Martin Narey,
who has been appointed chair of the Liberal Democrats' commission on
social mobility
Monday March 3 2008
Labour is "a long way off" meeting its commitments on child poverty,
according to Martin Narey, chair of the End Child Poverty coalition.
As chair of the coalition, and chief executive of Barnardo's, Narey
has constantly been chiding the government over its failure to live up
to its promises on child poverty.
Now he is in the position of having to come up with answers. One of
Nick Clegg's first acts as Liberal Democrat leader was to appoint
Narey to chair a commission on social mobility and task it with the
job of coming up with ideas of make Britain a fairer society.
Narey has now appointed fellow commissioners, and the group is due to
have its first meeting soon. It has already started commissioning
research.
A former director-general of the prison service, Narey is not a member
of the Liberal Democrats. He was appointed because he is seen as an
independent, expert voice.
He does not know whether the Lib Dems will adopt his recommendations,
whatever they turn out to be, and he is gloomy about the prospects of
any party openly calling for the redistribution of wealth.
But, as he made clear when we spoke at the Barnardo's offices in
Victoria, he is not short of ideas as to why there is a problem with
social mobility. We started with his assessment of Labour's record on
social mobility.
Narey: The core of the problem is that we have a desperate unequal
society. We have 3.8 million children living in poverty. Some of that
poverty is truly dire. Labour have taken about 600,000 children out of
poverty since 1999. They deserve great credit for that. The tax credit
system has had an impact.
But they are a long way off their commitment to halve child poverty by
2010 and, as things stand, there will probably be 1 million more
children in poverty by 2010 than Tony Blair promised 1999. They have
made good progress. That progress has halted and some would say gone
into reverse.
There are other things they've done which I think we need to wait for
considerable period of time to see if they come to fruition. I know
it's very fashionable to criticise sure start, but from what I've seen
of sure start I think it's got huge potential.
I hope that a future government, Labour or otherwise, doesn't lose its
nerve on sure start. The equivalent in the USA, Head Start in the 60s,
championed by Lyndon Johnson, was abandoned prematurely. And it was
only long after it was abandoned that it was seen to have contributed
so much to reducing the costs to society, for example the costs of
crime.
Guardian: One of the reasons for the establishment of the commission
is to investigate why social mobility has stalled. Do you have a view
on the reasons for that?
Narey: There's no shortage of views on this. One of the things I want
to get the commission to establish is the extent to which it has
stalled, if indeed it has. I accept most of the evidence that it has.
It seems to be quite clear from the evidence that for those born in
the 50s and 60s, our chances of moving up the social scale were much
greater than for those born in the 80s and 90s.
Guardian: You must have some view as to what explanations are more
likely than not.
Narey: I do have views and these are things I would want to explore. I
would mention a couple of things. The growth of income inequalities in
the UK. In particular, we have 3.8 million children living in poverty.
Half of those children have got at least one parent working. We have
very severe levels of poverty attaching to those in work.
The second thing is education. We know - Alan Johnson said this
repeatedly when he was secretary of state for education - that child
from a poor background falls behind a child from a more privileged
background at 22 months. And everything that happens in the education
system from that point on widens that gap.
Guardian: Why should that be worse now than in the 1970s?
Narey: I say this cautiously, because I need to test this, the ability
to shop around schools has grown hugely. I'm not so terribly old when
I went to secondary school in the 1970s I went to the local
comprehensive. And it was genuinely a comprehensive.
By the 1990s, when my children were going to school, like a lot of
middle class parents I was fully engaged in the education market,
shopping around, trying to make sure my kids got into the best
schools. I'm very worried about the education market. The fact is the
most disadvantaged children in our society go to the worst schools. We
should not be surprised when their life chances are depressed.
Guardian: There's a common view that the decline of grammar schools
has had an effect on social mobility.
Narey: It's an interesting theory and I'll keep my mind open to it,
but I would be astonished if that were the case.
Guardian: Why?
Narey: Because my own recollection of grammar schools ... I saw
nothing to suggest that this was a very sensible way of bringing up
kids. To condemn children to a second-class education at the age of 10
or 11 has always seemed to me to be something that is quite repugnant.
People always talk nostalgically about grammar schools. But they don't
talk nostalgically about secondary moderns.
Guardian: When Iain Duncan Smith looked at this for the Conservatives,
he identified family breakdown as a cause of inequality. Do you think
he's got a point or do you think he's barking up the wrong tree?
Narey: I wouldn't say he's barking up the wrong tree. I met IDS for
the fist time [recently] and I found him enormously impressive. But I
would offer an alternative theory, which is that dire poverty leads to
family breakdown.
Anyone who has brought up children or a family, if you think seriously
about what it must be like under such immense financial pressure, I
think it's very easy to understand why we have so many marriages that
fail.
Guardian: This is not the first commission on this subject. The
Fabians did something and the Tories have had a commission on social
justice. What do you hope that your commission will achieve that
others haven't?
Narey: I genuinely don't know and I'm not going to make any fatuous
claims about its finding its way through a very difficult area. One of
the things is the commission has got to investigate is whether those
who argue that social mobility is uniquely resistant to government
intervention . we have to examine whether that might be the case.
Guardian: Are you worried that it might be resistant to government
intervention?
Narey: No, because I have just given two examples, in income and
education, where I think you could make a difference. This government
commendably have committed to making a difference to the lives of
children in care. They are a very good example of children at the
bottom of the heap who get locked into the bottom of the heap and who
stay there. Children in care are children whose only crime is to be
born to parents who either cannot or will not look after them properly.
I think they have one-13th the chance of other children of going to
university. They grow up in poverty, they enter adulthood in poverty
and many of them stay there.
Now, Labour have said that in future they will make sure that children
in care do not grow up as they traditionally do, going to the worst
schools, but they will go to the best schools in terms of value added
... I think that could at a stroke, at virtually no cost, dramatically
improve the life chances of perhaps the single most disadvantaged
group of children in the UK.
Guardian: Can you do anything about income inequality without getting
the middle classes to pay more?
Narey: I think we can. I think the sum that we need for example to
halve child poverty is a significant sum, £3.8bn a year, but actually
that's about 0.5% of public expenditure. While I would not rule out
the case for those of us who are very comfortable in the UK to pay a
little more, as I think personally we should, I think the government
commitment to halve child poverty could be delivered without needing
to resort to that, what I accept is a politically rather unacceptable
option.
Guardian: Do you think any of the political parties are up for
redistribution as a practical policy that they can sell to the
electorate?
Narey: I would be very surprised if you heard any of the political
parties using the 'R'-word, redistribution, before the next election.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008
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Paul C. Gorski
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Personal Page: http://www.paulgorski.efoliomn2.com/
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