Having started at the (US) 99th percentile and having luckily risen to the 2nd percentile, I'll say that the most difficult part was learning 'the language' of the middle class. By language, I mean all the nuanced understandings, cultural concepts, non-verbal stuff that is impossible to gain without being in it. And, as an adult I'm still learning.<p>One example that I've recently become frighteningly aware of is that I have a vastly different understanding of what 'property' means than those who came from middle class US cultures. It's taken many years for me to understand this because in fact I know and understand the English definition of property as well as my counterparts. But, there are subtle differences in meaning that fundamentally filter my perspective. For instance, I never understood why my college friends became upset when I borrowed things and never returned them, nor why they thought it bizzare that I'd tell them, of my stuff, to just keep it.<p>There are countless other examples. The article particularly makes me think of my adult friends and their relationships, in and out, rarely 'settling down' from an outsider view. But, just because they get divorced a lot and re-married, or cheat a lot, etc. It doesn't mean that their social conventions are any less valid than those of the middle class America. There are strong social consistencies and social language, unfortunately reinforcing.<p>My models are very different still, the semantics don't align right with my current environment, and today I have difficulty teaching my son the middle class way.
This article alludes to the "bee sting" theory of poverty (see <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/?page=full" rel="nofollow">http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/...</a> ).<p>That brings up an interesting question: in historical terms, the subject of this story is quite well-off; he's not always physically at risk, he has ready access to probably non-toxic food, he has shelter, etc. Over a long enough timeline, his life is pretty good. Even his home situation--mom is a prostitute, but he can't tell anyone lest the authorities separate them--is in all likelihood less common than it might have been centuries ago.<p>So if these conditions are so awful that we can't possibly expect people to improve without fixing said conditions, how do we explain historical economic growth. We're descended from people who had <i>really</i> miserable lives: sleep in a cave, hope you can hunt or gather enough food to stay alive, go to sleep hungry more often than not, risk death by infection every time you get a cut that's more than skin deep, and reproduce through what any modern person would call serial rape. Beings that were physiologically human (basically us, but probably lactose intolerant) had to deal with all of those circumstances, and managed to bequeath to the next generation some slightly less miserable circumstances.<p>It comes back to the anthropic principle: if misery is a strong disincentive for progress, how did we progress to the point that we have leisure time to discuss this?<p>(I've asked the same question on Quora here: <a href="http://www.quora.com/How-do-adherents-to-the-bee-sting-theory-of-poverty-explain-historical-economic-growth" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/How-do-adherents-to-the-bee-sting-theor...</a> . I am very interested in the answers.)
Fantastic read.<p>Being an aspiring entrepreneur, I tend to look to others that have made it, and see what I can learn from them. I became fascinated with biographies autobiographies of everyone from Richard Branson and Steve Jobs to Lance Armstrong to Anthony Kedis (red hot chili peppers). The single best one of them I've read is "From Pieces to Weight" by 50 cent. It written so well that you don't just understand why he made the decisions he did (becoming a drug dealer) you understand that you would have very likely make the same decisions, should you have been in his shoes. It really opens up another perspective on an individuals behavior, and has made me that much less quick to judge.
Although I agree that the original post was naive, I do not think that the misleading vividness and hasty generalization employed by Jefferson addresses the issue to which the OP was referring. There is massive hardship across all low income families but the use an outlier scenario does not negate the valid argument that having goals and knowing that there is a prize to win at the end of the race, is a strong motivator.<p>I inferred that a lack of hope and knowledge of an achievable future, is one of the primary causes of lower performing low income students.
My mother and grandmother have devoted their lives to outreach to the low-income community. From what they have told me, "poverty" is not at the heart of this issue. Most of these parents have self-destructive habits which will persist regardless of the degree of social engineering thrown at the problem. The only thing that will save children like the one in the article is one-on-one support from caring individuals around him.
At least this kid tried to gain some perspective before writing about it - <a href="http://scratchbeginnings.com/" rel="nofollow">http://scratchbeginnings.com/</a>
Is it off topic to wonder how the story of the badly behaved boy and his mother ended? Presumably with the police involved, they got separated and she was "protected" even more, albeit deprived of a livelihood. Maybe in another era, the consensus was that sex work was such a great job that legal penalties were needed to disincentivize it or there wouldn't be enough women left to be wives and housekeepers. In these more enlightened times, we consider it such a horrible job that anyone who would do it must be crazy or coerced, and needs to be shown that there are alternatives, but we retain the legal penalties in case we're not sure.
Learning requires only access to education and a stable living environment... and then of course actually doing it.<p>Internet has mostly taken care of access to education. That leaves only living conditions and motivation as precursors to success.
To be honest, I don't know that this article is HN material (but I didn't flag it). That said, thank you for posting this. Poverty is not just something you can "The Secret" your way out of.
"How best to prioritize learning to read rigorously over scheming to get home and be the man of the house in the stead of the father who left? How best to find joy in school with so much hate and embitterment poisoning the rest of your life?"<p>How can we fix this? The problem is that no matter how much our teachers may push students to do better and work harder in school, their home life may work against it.<p>It's one of the side-effects of freedom. To some degree, there will never be a way to fix it. Unless we can control what happens when they get home.