The "Starting" Line

What we all like to envision when we think of school.

Dale, Noah, and I had a great conversation with one of the guys that lives in Philadelphia with The Simple Way the last night of our stay. Coe perfectly summed up what frustrates me with this blind spot toward poverty that most U.S. Christians have. He said basically, "We have this misconception that we all begin at this same starting line and that this is some big race to the finish. We think that 'you should be able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps because I did'...neglecting the fact that they were mostly likely born to a mother that was maybe 16, who was desperately looking for something that was missing inside of herself, isn't educated and doesn't have the means to care for them."

Later in the conversation, I remarked that sometimes we forget that maybe they can't pull themselves up, because they never had the boots to begin with.

Then yesterday, a Facebook friend posted this article, from BillMoyers.com discussing how all of the reforms for schools that are spreading like wildfire are doing nothing to actually help students. Instead, it's lining the pockets of corporate America and making the disparity in education even worse.

The reality for TOO many children. The photo description says these are children at an East St. Louis school. Possibly recess?

The author points to the real issue though...poverty! Because I know not many will take the time to read the article, I'm sharing several quotes below. But one question has been persistently nagging me for the last week as I, albeit briefly, interacted with Christ followers who have chosen to live in the ghetto and love "the least of these": When did we...as the people of God...decide to swallow the lie that corporate America has fed us? That somehow because a person is desperately poor and ill-equipped to care for themselves, it must entirely be their own fault?

I know those questions may offend most Christians I know...shoot...they offend me! But the Holy Spirit is patiently calling me to let go of trying to please others so I can have friends and instead, listen to His Voice, crying out for those who can no longer cry!

• "Are we really expected to believe that it’s just a coincidence that the public education and poverty crises are happening at the same time? Put another way: Are we really expected to believe that everything other than poverty is what’s causing problems in failing public schools?"

• "In 2011, for instance, Stanford University’s Sean Reardon released a comprehensive study documenting the new “income achievement gap.” The report proved that family income is now, by far, the biggest determining and predictive factor in a student’s educational achievement."
• "One way to appreciate this reality in stark relief is to just remember that, as Barkan shows, for all the claims that the traditional public school system is flawed, America’s wealthiest traditional public schools happen to be among the world’s highest-achieving schools. Most of those high-performing wealthy public schools also happen to be unionized. If, as “reformers” suggest, the public school system or the presence of organized labor was really the key factor in harming American education, then those wealthy schools would be in serious crisis — and wouldn’t be at the top of the international charts. Instead, the fact that they aren’t in crisis and are so high-achieving suggests neither the system itself nor unions are the big factor causing high-poverty schools to lag behind. It suggests that the “high poverty” part is the problem."
• "For corporations served by the existing economic paradigm and for the politicians and activists those corporations underwrite, such a conversation is simply unacceptable because changing the policies that create poverty and inequality potentially threatens their existing financial power and privilege. Thus, those corporations, politicians and activists in the “reform” movement do whatever they can — bash teachers, scream strong-but-meaningless words like “accountability,” criticize public school structures, etc. — to shift the education conversation away from poverty and inequality."
• "With poverty and inequality intensifying, a conversation about the real problem is finally starting to happen. And the more education “reformers” try to distract from it, the more they will expose the fact that they aren’t driven by concern for kids but by the ugliest kind of greed — the kind that feigns concerns for kids in order to pad the corporate bottom line."