The “culture of poverty” mindset creates a distances between the impoverished and the wealthy. Ehrenreich provides the term “culture of poverty” as exemplified in Michael Harrington's The Other America. This work is the foundation in which Ehrenreich reveals the reality of poverty and the misconceptions of the term. There is the idea that “The poor were different from the rest of us, it argued, radically different, and not just in the sense that they were deprived, disadvantaged, poorly housed, or poorly fed.”(607) This idea promotes that if adults with different economic backgrounds are totally different why would their children differ. In Jonathan Kozol’s research he makes various observations about court cases that play a huge role in our
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The rich and poor are the separate but unequal groups that have existed since one cave man had two more rocks than the other. This inequality has also plagued the American educational system until Brown v. Board when children were integrated but this change self-reversed semi naturally over time due to the varying quantities of money invested in individual schools of the same region. From highly populated cities author Kozol has provided many statistics in his piece Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Apartheid of racial demographics in comparison to the budget of each school which allows the reader to draw the conclusion that is in union with Barbara Ehrenreich's statement that “poverty is a shortage of money” (Ehrenreich 609), and this shortage of money means families at a financial disadvantage cannot invest in their children's education leading to differences in education. These authors present the problems both in poverty and how the educational system is being effected. By shifting the “culture of poverty” mindset children would be more integrated which would eliminate the segregation in big city schools as shown by …show more content…
Poor people are seen as well as described to think differently and do all things differently which perhaps is the case but that’s to be determined later. In the minds of some especially those who believe that poor people are fundamentally different, it would make sense to lump people with “things” in common together such as financial status but that should not be the case in education. Private education has become something parents feel is a necessity in order to ensure their child has the best future possible which leads to public schools declining in resources and funds for children whose parents cannot afford a better education. Education should bring together children from all backgrounds and not separate them. The lack of diversity has proven to hurt some schools especially with No Child Left Behind, which demands equal results from unequally prepared students. By shifting away from the “culture of poverty” mentality students would be reintegrated and the implemented high stakes testing would have drastically better results as seen in Kozol’s work that shows test scores rose with integration and decreased with segregation at different time
The rich and poor are the separate but unequal groups that have existed since one cave man had two more rocks than the other. This inequality has also plagued the American educational system until Brown v. Board when children were integrated but this change self-reversed semi naturally over time due to the varying quantities of money invested in individual schools of the same region. From highly populated cities author Kozol has provided many statistics in his piece Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Apartheid of racial demographics in comparison to the budget of each school which allows the reader to draw the conclusion that is in union with Barbara Ehrenreich's statement that “poverty is a shortage of money” (Ehrenreich 609), and this shortage of money means families at a financial disadvantage cannot invest in their children's education leading to differences in education. These authors present the problems both in poverty and how the educational system is being effected. By shifting the “culture of poverty” mindset children would be more integrated which would eliminate the segregation in big city schools as shown by …show more content…
Poor people are seen as well as described to think differently and do all things differently which perhaps is the case but that’s to be determined later. In the minds of some especially those who believe that poor people are fundamentally different, it would make sense to lump people with “things” in common together such as financial status but that should not be the case in education. Private education has become something parents feel is a necessity in order to ensure their child has the best future possible which leads to public schools declining in resources and funds for children whose parents cannot afford a better education. Education should bring together children from all backgrounds and not separate them. The lack of diversity has proven to hurt some schools especially with No Child Left Behind, which demands equal results from unequally prepared students. By shifting away from the “culture of poverty” mentality students would be reintegrated and the implemented high stakes testing would have drastically better results as seen in Kozol’s work that shows test scores rose with integration and decreased with segregation at different time