Level the Playing Field

I was thinking about the people who claim that poor people’s problems are created by their own laziness. Of course, everyone, including the people making the statements, know that is not true at all.

I grew up poor. I won’t go into the details and turn this into a sob story, but I did. I was lucky. I got a break. My ex-sister-in-law’s husband recommended me for a computer programming trainee job. If it wasn’t for that I would have worked in factories making low wages and getting laid off once every couple years.

When you start with nothing you know very well it is not an even playing field. We didn’t have much but we had it a lot better than the inner-city poor. Imagine trying to keep up your grades with what they have to deal with. Cramped living conditions, dangerous streets. Schools with rats, failing heating and cooling, and books that are more than twenty years old. The teachers are worn out from trying to keep the kids on the right track, while the gangs are tempting the boys with money to be their bag men, and girls living in fear of what they may want them for.

Tell me that they have the same chance for a good education and a decent job and suburban kids. I know they don’t have to go to college to get a good job. Do you know what it takes to get into a trade school? For poor kids, it is just about as out-of-reach as college. The odds are, the ones that aren’t tempted into drugs and other things, will get what they can out of public education and find the best job they can, and the cycle will start all over again. Yes, there are some extraordinarily driven kids that will work their way out, but they are few and far between. You don’t have to be extraordinarily driven to get out of a suburban high school and on to a better life.