Welcher-Miner Blog #3

On pg. 237, in the chapter titled “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty”, Ambrasky writes of a conversation with JoAnn Page, a Holocaust survivor and executive director of the Fortune Society.  Although I know relatively well (via education not experience) what side effects come with poverty, her words put it in to blunt persepective.

“Poverty is when the money that you need isn’t there and you have to make choices that compromise your health or your future or your ability to care for your family.  Where you don’t eat fresh vegetables, go the emergency room instead of a doctor, cut your medications in half, make choices between heat and eating, and your kids weigh less during the winter.  That’s poverty.”

Her work to rearrange funding to support helps to change the cycle.  As Ambrasky so often speaks, poverty is truly a situation perpetuated by the government and their lack of will to address the situation.  Compassionate people with goals and grit, those like Page, inspire me.  She is a difference maker and reading of the positive effects she has on those who walk through her doors restores some faith in humanity.    It might be in baby steps, but it takes individuals like Page to force the process and bring light to the issues relative to poverty.

In this very same chapter, Ambrasky addresses a critical issue – the state of poverty and education. 

“So long as the broader conditions limit children’s learning potential – so long as kids are homeless, coming to school hungry, living in communities broken down by drugs and gangs, attending schools so short of funds that class sizes are soaring and textbooks becoming luxury rather than a necessity – good teachers alone will not be sufficient.”

He speaks of stability in society leading to less disruption in classrooms and ultimately higher educational attainment.  Ambrasky addresses the topic of charter schools and their attempts to improve the educational settings for poorer children.  Yet, non-educational reforms will most benefit these children, especially those in deeply impoverished areas, on a more mass scale without the necessity of celebrity financial support.  Those living in poverty are at a disadvantage in every stage of the educational journey.  This is an especially alarming part of the book to me as we, the residents of Illinois, are currently struggling to make ends meet in school districts all over the state.  Faculty are losing their jobs and schools are closing down, lending to bigger classroom sizes and thus an increasingly inefficient teaching/learning environment. 

What I took away from reading this book, as a whole, is that poverty is a multifaceted problem with no single cause or single solution.  Ambrasky proposed countless policy changes and strategies, but in the big picture, we as a society are most accountable.  We must educate ourselves and accept the reality that poverty can and does happen to anyone regardless of the job they have, car they drive, or house they live in.  It can happen at any time, and it is crippling.  Ambrasky closed chapter two by writing,

“As a country we have the political tools to break both old cycles of poverty and also the new ones produced in the wake of financial collapse.  Add in a credible dose of empathy and moral imagination and indignation, and there’s no reason we couldn’t … shrink the problem of entrenched poverty.”