Low Income Families and Poverty in Schools

The specific issue that I am interested in focusing on is low income families and poverty in schools. I chose these topics because I believe that the issue is that only some kids in schools have access to new and up-to-date books, but not all of the kids. Readings and writings are habits that cannot be achieved unless you build on it. We may blame the parents by saying that they need to start reading with their kids before they get to age of 5 years old. It is unfair to say that because not everyone is born with the privilege of having parent that speak English. We never talk about values of people in poverty. There are a lot of parents who don’t care about their own kids. Absent fathers, and a society that seems to accept single parenthood as inevitable. Motivation is also one of the keys to explore poverty, Studying comes from a culture where education is highly valued. In some cultures, parents will beat their children if they don’t perform well in school while other cultures may not care about schools as much. Our education system has a lot of room for possible improvement, and hopefully as our generation begins to graduate, we move to make these improvements.

This topic is relevant to me because I grew up in the Mission District and then I move to the Bayview District which are both considered low income neighborhood. Even though my middle school and high school were 1-2 hours away from my house, I knew that I didn’t want to go to schools in my neighborhood due to bad reputation and that I wouldn’t get any support due to low fundings in those schools. That is one of the reasons why I chose to pursue a higher education because I realize that living in public housing and minimum wage jobs is only temporary and that no one should be living paycheck to paycheck. People think increasing the minimum wage will help the economy but forget that corporation will have to start cutting employee hours and the city will raises prices like housing to keep up with the costs.

The issues relate to me I hate how everyone assumes that every Asian is subject to the model minority myth. When teacher talks about racisms in class, it is often referred to American or Hispanic students who certainly deserve the right to receive the equal behaviors as others, but Asian are often always excluded when racial discriminations and racism problems are discussed probably because of lighter skin than other minorities. However, Asians many times do get treated differently and feel uncomfortable listening to stereotypical jokes. I know that darker skin people are greatly discriminated against especially since they’re perceived as disadvantaged in school from the start and that should be addressed but all I’m saying is that anyone can live in poverty but the problem with stereotypes is that there are consequences and even though we’re not label as label us as lazy, underachieving, thugs, thieves and hooligans, Unfortunately, there is this stereotype that all Asians are rich and educated and do not need help. As a result, our communities do not get affordable housing programs like other neighborhoods, which is highly needed and often people do not outreach to their communities to see what kind of help they need. There are a lot of us that need affordable housing programs and need access to social service centers, which is very limited but because there is this stereotype that we’re all rich, most of the time we don’t get the help.

This issue is an equity concern because we have always been giving the perspective of never giving up and if you have the drive to continue, anyone can succeed. They tells us that as long as you are dedicated about your education, it doesn’t matter where you start out in life but that’s not always the case, there’re plenty of factors that go into it like having parents that have low paying jobs and can barely make ends meet? What if they have fallen on hard times and they are unable to provide those extras support for their children from SAT prep to tutoring for their kids when they’re struggling. It’s easy for us to judge, but we truly have no idea if we’re not in their shoes. I don’t really know much about the people that live in my community even though I work in the neighborhood.

Works Cited

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2. Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. Broadway Books.
3. Payne, R. K. (2008). A framework for understanding poverty (5th ed.). aha! Process, Inc.
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