Blaming poverty for education woes

By Dorothy Nevils

People give me a hard time because I give others a hard time. They -- some of them, that is -- say I have no sympathy. I expect too much.

The truth of the matter is -- at least my truth -- is I have a low tolerance for party people when said party is a pity party. The attendees attempt to pawn their predicament off as predestined, their lot in life, for a whole host of reasons, most of them counterfeit.

As a rule, when things don't turn out, we offer up the same tired excuses for our plight. People are poor. Schools have a high poverty rate. Who can expect more?

Strip back layers of poverty and it's like stripping back layers of a rotten roof where you'll find "splatches" (see usage note at the end of this column) of tar, mismatched shingles, scraps of tarpaper and, who knows, maybe a few pieces of tin stuck in somewhere. The problem is generations deep, and, contrary to what we claim, it is often not the lack of opportunity. Somewhere, someone refused to take responsibility.

For years public education has been made available. For years it has not been a priority. Yet we decry our circumstances: "Woe is me. I have no money. I have no job." But ... I have a new baby. I have an LCD HDTV. My children have iPods. I can't spell beverage, but I drink Courvoisier. Matter of fact, you're good people, and I'm feeling pretty mellow right about now ... next round's on me.

We have no job. We have no money. We have no priorities. Count back four words and you'll have the problem. Wants and needs are in the same pocket, and when we reach in, we do like we do when the collection plate comes around. We feel around, sorting through the change to get the right coins. Needs are the big bills. We leave them there.

We don't like to pay for our needs. They cost too much. They're never-ending. Plus they're not as eye-catching once they've been met. Besides, someone will "feel our pain" and offer a helping hand. There'll be a free lunch at school, free textbooks, free supplies, free uniforms ... because we need them.

We look to others far too much to supply our needs, and we teach our children to do the same thing.

We'll pay for Junior to attend basketball camp but not to be tutored. If free tutoring is offered, we'll sign up our children, but we won't even offer a Valentine gift to the volunteer who's taken on the job we don't have time to do -- like their time is less important than ours.

When our precious ones get hired at Mickey D's, they get to spend their money on junk -- zero for saving for school, zilch for books. They can get books for free at the library, and someone will pay their tuition because we're poor.

I recognize that some circumstances are indeed beyond our control. In many cases, however, if we had valued education three generations ago -- well, probably five, given how we've squashed the generations together -- if education had been what we really, really wanted and we had passed such values to our children, maybe we wouldn't be so "needy." We would have spent our energy on learning, preparing for the future. As a result, our children's scholastic level would be remarkably higher, and so would ours.

(Usage note: Splatch. Unknown -- although splatcher is a legitimate term derived from onomatopoeic combining form depicting the sound a jackleg roofer makes when he splashes a splotch of tar on the roof in order to patch it.)

Dorothy Nevils of Gary, Ind., is a retired teacher who writes education articles for The 411, a paper that serves Gary, Lake County and Northwest Indiana. She is a native of Mounds, Ill.