In re: what is the silver bullet?
Per ni_q, education is not the silver bullet that kills poverty, disease, teenage pregnancy, etc. etc. So what is? We've seen studies that show, over and over again, the number of vectors through which class propagates itself. If you have middle- to upper-class, well-educated parents, chances are better that they will read to you and generally involve themselves (or a nanny or au pair) in your upbringing, that you'll do better in school and go to college on your parents' dime, and therefore that you'll end up middle- to upper-class and well-educated yourself. If your parents are not so well off, chances are that you'll grow up eating overpriced and less nutritious food, that you'll do worse in school, that you'll drop out of school to enter the workforce, that you'll get pregnant at a young age, that you'll incur large personal debts, that you'll never own a home, and that you, and your children, and your children's children, will live and die poor. Housing and basic food costs more for the urban poor than it does for people living in the suburbs; health care costs more because they don't have health insurance; interest rates are higher because they are classed as 'high-risk' borrowers.
So what remedy is there for this? How does one break the cycle of poverty?
Motherfucking wealth redistribution, motherfucker. More federal funding of schools to alleviate the funding problems of urban school districts. Federal funding of community centers, of HeadStart preschool, of libraries and late-night basketball, of free clinics and food stamps, of arts education and subsidized lunch programs. Direct student loans at lower interest rates. Your tax dollars going to people who need them. And it's not just money- studies have shown that integration of public schools based on family income, rather than race, brings up the performance of low-income kids. They vicariously benefit from the advantages that their middle- and upper-class classmates receive. Subsidized low-income housing in relatively high-income areas can do the same thing for living conditions.
It seems so simple. Raise the kids better, support their physical development and education, support their families in supporting them, give them the chances that their higher-income counterparts already have, and they'll break the class barrier. They'll make it out. If parents can't do it themselves- and that's what these studies show, that the working poor for the most part can't do it themselves- the federal government should, in fact, do it for them.
Or, um, I think so, at least. Hmm.
So what remedy is there for this? How does one break the cycle of poverty?
Motherfucking wealth redistribution, motherfucker. More federal funding of schools to alleviate the funding problems of urban school districts. Federal funding of community centers, of HeadStart preschool, of libraries and late-night basketball, of free clinics and food stamps, of arts education and subsidized lunch programs. Direct student loans at lower interest rates. Your tax dollars going to people who need them. And it's not just money- studies have shown that integration of public schools based on family income, rather than race, brings up the performance of low-income kids. They vicariously benefit from the advantages that their middle- and upper-class classmates receive. Subsidized low-income housing in relatively high-income areas can do the same thing for living conditions.
It seems so simple. Raise the kids better, support their physical development and education, support their families in supporting them, give them the chances that their higher-income counterparts already have, and they'll break the class barrier. They'll make it out. If parents can't do it themselves- and that's what these studies show, that the working poor for the most part can't do it themselves- the federal government should, in fact, do it for them.
Or, um, I think so, at least. Hmm.