Poverty and Education The Problem and the Solution Essay

Abstract

Poverty or destitution is a severe problem that has a considerable effect on the ability of children to learn and to progress academically in school. To this perspective, income poverty, parental inputs, and family background, all have a considerable impact on the cognitive development of young children. The impact of income poverty on children's cognitive development is negative and significant. This negative effect is more significant for persistent poverty as it is more harmful to cognitive development than period to period poverty. It is noteworthy that teachers could play an essential role in helping students from low-income families when students face economic and educational challenges. The solution is developmentally appropriate, and culturally sensitive interventions such as the EAP could help young children from low SES families to improve their literacy skills, prepare better for kindergarten and perform better when they get to kindergarten. There is a need to look at structures as a problem when designed literacy intervention problems instead of the often used student-as-problem approach. Looking at structures-as-problem provides new ideas that can help improve reading and literacy. It is essential to re-design and pedagogical repertoires to ensure teachers become more prepared to help young students from low SES families.

Thesis Statement

Poverty drastically affects children's ability to learn.  However, many studies show how the negative effects of poverty on education can be overcome.

THE PROBLEM

Researchers Compton-Lilly and Delbridge (2019) recently investigated the matter of how poverty affects children's ability to learn. The researchers utilized Bourdieu's theory of capital and statistics from longitudinal studies to investigate how poverty affects learning for two students from a poor urban community. In the study, the researchers particularly investigated the manner in which poverty affected the ability of poor parents to support their dependents in school. The researchers also particularly investigated how social capital and cultural capital can be leveraged in a bid to help families despite their social-economic position. The study is based on two case studies, as mentioned above. The two cases studies are of two students – the first is Bradford, who finds it difficult to read and learn, and the second is Alicia, who does not find it difficult to read and learn and generally performs better than average in school. Upon reviewing studies and research papers on United States schooling, race, class, and discussing Bourdieu's (1986) capital conceptualizations, the two researchers find out the challenges or difficulties that poor parents go through as their offspring move through the school system and become educated. They do this by interviewing two parents – one parent for the first student and the other for the other student. Data was then gathered in the study from the two parents and the families they represent and subsequently analyzed to find out the role played by academic economic capital (specific experiences and resources which require finances and usually result in academic success) in how their children were progressing in school. The researchers gathered the data by interviewing the parents. The results of the analysis revealed that the community the parents came from, the schools to which they sent their children, and their homes did not have sufficient academic capital, and this hurt how the children were progressing in school. Nevertheless, the results of the analysis also revealed that the parents and their families had access to other types of capital, including academic, social capital, and embodied academic capital. Based on their analysis and the results, the two researchers concluded that poverty or destitution is a serious problem that has a considerable effect on the ability of children to learn and to progress academically in school. They two researchers also noted that teachers could play an important role in helping students from low-income families when the students face economic and educational challenges,

Researchers Hampden-Thompson and Galindo (2017) also investigated how poverty affects the ability of children to learn. In their study, these two researchers investigated the role played by two things – the level of satisfaction felt by parents on schools, and the relationships between families and schools – on the educational achievement of students. The goal of this particular study was to enhance educational practice and policy through formally investigating and analyzing the potential benefits of positive links or relationships between schools and families, including how the links can help young people to become successful later in life through academics. The study was particularly centered on answering two research questions: (1) How are family-school relationships and the educational achievements of young people related? (2) To what degree does the parental level of satisfaction in a school affect the relationship between family-school relationships and the academic performance of young people? To answer the above two study questions, the researchers utilized a special data collection measure known as…

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…habits can be utilized as an area for differentiated learning or education. The method of study involved comparing two separate case studies done at different times. The case studies build on one another, and comparing them juxtaposes one library (the one in the top school) against another to challenge the imagination and reveal hitherto unknown areas of intervention. The study data was gathered through observation. The comparison revealed that one of the stand out differences between the libraries in comparison was how they were decorated. Another stand out difference between the two libraries was the location of computers. The physical comparison reveals what is expected. That top or elite schools have libraries with more space, more books, and more digital resources. The researcher, Loh (2016), interpreted the results of the study as indicating that there is a need to look at structures as a problem when designed literacy intervention problems instead of the often used student-as-problem approach. The researcher says that looking at structures-as-problem provides new ideas that can help improve reading and literacy. Loh (2016) concludes that comprehensive interventions that are both individual-oriented and structure-oriented can help to bridge the literacy skills gap between children from separate SES families.

Lastly, the study by Comber and Kamler (2004) also proposes a solution to the problem of poverty affecting children's ability to learn. In the study, the researchers show ways through which teachers can adopt a researcher's point of view toward the children they teach. Through these ways, the two researchers reveal that they helped two early childhood education teachers to re-examine their assumptions about children from low SES families. They argue that through getting teachers to change the way they think about children from poor backgrounds, teachers can become more involved in trying to help those children. The objective of this research was to find ways in which better learning outcomes can be achieved via curriculum changes. The research was conducted in two states and involved school communities and teacher workshops. Twenty teachers participated and were paired in the study, and data were collected via interviews. The results show that teachers can be helped to change their methods to bridge the academic gap between children from low SES and children from high SES families. Moreover, the changes can have powerful positive effects. According to these findings, the researchers argue that it is essential to re-design and pedagogical repertoires to ensure…