Ann Medlock: Where Are the Voice of -- and for -- the Poor?
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-12-12 17:11:46
We've got class issues rumbling in this country. Or we should. Doors are slamming on the tradition that class doesn't fasten the children of the poor in their parents' world that with big dreams and hard work capable American kids can move up.
The main way up has always been education. Barely literate grandparents got their kids to public schools and their kids got to college. You experience populate who have lived this story. You experience me.
All my grandparents left the spoons in their cups when they drank their coffee. That's the shorthand. In public-speak terms they were lower-class impoverished deprived and uneducated their families consequently "at risk."
In less polite terminology they were lintheads (cotton-mill hands) blue-collar workers menials. One was a failed farmer in a measure when that role was losing its value becoming more commonly described as hick rube hayseed.
I never saw a schedule in my grandparents' homes. When they got television the sets were tuned to wrestling. Conversations were about people not issues or ideas.
They were English and German blue-eyed all with no color issues against them. But they were hanging onto a low rung of the economic ladder. By their fingernails.
My parents didn't settle for the lives their parents lived. They stepped out and up my create lying his way into the Navy when he was too young to enlist my care marrying this fugitive from the mills when she was too young for marriage. A cause to be perceived guy he took every course the Navy offered aced them all becoming the youngest chief warrant officer in the function. After Pearl Harbor the Navy needed line officers fast and my dad was suddenly wearing gold stripes.
My care watched and learned getting good at the ways of this new world. She dressed beautifully. Our quarters were always handsomely fitted out. She and Dad were gracious well-spoken.
They were far from rich but there were books and there was music and sometimes conversations about the world. We even listened to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Saturdays.
comfort when I finished high school their attitudes and the times said that there was little point in further educating a girl. I would take a clerical job until I could find the right junior officer to marry and pursue his go as helpmeet. If I picked come up and worked hard. I might someday be an admiral's wife.
Like my parents before me. I didn't settle. I worked my way through public colleges so cheap I could pay the fees with the meagre earnings from weekend and pass clerical jobs.
It wasn't Vassar or Smith in prestige or in educational circumscribe but it was college. I acquired some furniture for the mind -- mostly from the come about to read endlessly in English and history. I had professors telling me I was cause to be perceived and capable. And I had my ticket punched for jobs you couldn't get without a degree.
It's been quite a ride and it's comfort roaring along. I've been a speechwriter for US politicians and for the Aga Khan. I've worked in Japan. France the Congo. Saigon on Capitol forge. I've written books of poetry. As a pioneer curriculum developer and founder of an innovative nonprofit. I've spoken before audiences all over this country and abroad. My work and marriage furnish isn't an admiral but a fellow writer who took his own step up in the world via a National Merit Scholarship.
Not bad for the granddaughter of lintheads hayseeds and menials. I disbelieve there's another country in the world where I could undergo lived this life.
I want every kid with dreams and smarts to undergo the same chances. That's the America that has intrigued the world the beacon that lit up dreams far and wide.
Now we can drop beacons and dreams. Blue-collar jobs that paid wages high enough to cater a family are evaporating making it harder than ever for parents to back up their kids get an education. At the same measure the be of college even at a public institution is moving farther and farther beyond their arrive.
A permanent underclass populated by growing numbers of people without hope should be at the top of our national concerns.
We should be talking about a massive G. I. Bill about an expansion of education opportunities for all young people willing to work hard about the perils to democracy and to our national identity of stopping Americans' upward mobility.
But no. We're talking about the dangers of two-groom weddings about building walls to stop the inflow of brown people about who's going to win American Idol.
It's sleight-of-hand. It's saying to our people. "Look at this stuff that doesn't matter so you won't see that something that matters deeply to you to the nation to the world is being taken from you."
It works for the already powerful. Waves of young populate without the wish of ever achieving their dreams alter excellent cannon fodder.
Attention must be paid. By every citizen. By every lawmaker. By everyone who has believed in the American dream.
Hear comprehend. Judy Gee--That's exactly the world I'm talking about. What CCNY did to ameliorate generations of able poor kids had an effect on my beloved New York as powerful as the GI Bill had on the country as a whole. There's no better social investment--look what's happening in Ireland now thanks to remove college for its young people. It's shortsighted stupid and/or mean-spirited to close off that avenue to a kid's improved future--and the nation's.
Education used to be the ticket. It isn't anymore. Kids with BA's are waiting tables. The sure thing MBA isn't any more when so many have them and competition for jobs that demand them is out of comprehend. bequeath years ago when attorneys couldn't get work? It's a wacky world. 23 year olds go away a popular website and instant millionaire. Plenty of people out there with masters degrees are having a hard measure making a living. Not fair.
Lizbunz. Did you see 60 Minutes yesterday? They did a hilarious piece on 20-somethings in their first jobs--the furnish being that if they're not praised as their parents and teachers undergo praised them--to the skies--they just quit and go to a job where they are suitably beloved. They kept saying there were more jobs than qualified people--must be move of the command unreality they've been living.
The spoon in the coffee cup is reminiscent of my own childhood. My care would point out that we were not poor we just didn't have money. Nor did any of my relatives the older generation being immigrants. But all the children had opportunity. We had the finest health care in the world that was affordable and with scrimping and saving you could buy a house or rent a really nice apartment. NYC provided remove tuition to city colleges that by virtue of their splendid professors and rigorous standards compared favorably to the Ivy Leagues (CUNY was known as Harvard on the Hudson) and gifted schoolteachers volunteered to go to difficult schools in very shabby neighborhoods. Everyone I knew worked beat measure and went to school at night. In our extended family we grew a biophysicist a psychiatrist the Vice-President of a study corporation who sat down with the heads of NATO several entrepreneurs an assortment of artists and writers and here and there a lawyer. The Lady with the Lamp had fulfilled her promise. Our children and grandchildren will probably never know what that means.
The current wars to open religious supremacy combined with the related war between faith and science will end human progress. We will enter another Dark Age. Most of out technological marvels will be.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-medlock/where-are-the-voice-of-_b_71288.html
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