That's an interesting question.
The other post I wrote was based on some studies I had read on poverty and social mobility. This post will be sheer Rambiwandering.
I didn't mean to be offering an explanation, merely the truth about this particular group, which yogi, I felt, had misrepresented. ALthough I think the most simple explanation would be the complete alienation between them and the meritocracy that functions outside their walls.
While children can become aware of a different culture or different values through the medium of TV or film, (although I'm not sure that what they're seeing on Melrose Place is exactly morally inspirational), how much reality does it have? What registers most is probably the material lifestyles. And the way to immediate gratification for these desires is through money, and the best way to get that is dealing drugs, or becoming a pro basketball player. They may not see a connection to education, or to hard work, especially when it's so much easier the other way. I wonder if watching something like Cosby must look like a bad joke to them. About as real as us watching the lives of the Rich and Famous.
They have no point of reference in their own lives where they can relate the "other" culture they're seeing to what is real for them. There is no foundation there, no support from a parent, or the community, and most likely, there is ridicule from peers. Teaching my children to be disciplined,instilling in them values and a love of learning, a belief that they needed to earn, not take, and to give back, was a process that we worked at daily for a lot of years.
Somehow I don't see TV as a viable teacher, I guess. Just a glimpse of what they can't have.
Do you remember when yours were little and you said, Go clean your room, and you;d go upstairs after a while, and they'd be sitting on the floor playing, the room still a disaster. It wasn't that they didn't want to, they just had no idea HOW. (especially my little one, Ammo. I had to break things into teeny little incremental steps for him)It was all just-- impossibly overwhelmingly beyond them.
I wonder if the numbers have improved on "getting out". It seems that what I read they aren't, and that the poverty class is increasing. |
