The everyday natural disaster nobody sees

Research (Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2007 - The Impact of Poverty on Young Childrens’ Experiences of School) has shown that by the age of seven or eight, many boys from low socioeconomic backgrounds have disengaged from their educational experience. Many more follow in the early years of high school.

One of the primary reasons is that too many schools fail to engage the students in a meaningful way. They do not put learning into context. School is seen as something you do to prepare for life.

This fails the students on a number of levels, but in the very worst case scenarios (where violence and gang culture are rife) it fails young males who do not place much importance on the future; for them, it’s all about the here and now.

Education must realise this and start dealing with the here and now.

Add to the fact that in comparison to their middle class peers, children as young as nine-year-olds know their education is inferior; they know their access to extra-curricular activities is diminished; and they know they will get lower paying jobs.

Education first and foremost needs to reframe this knowledge. That means moving away from the relentless push to improve literacy and numeracy above and beyond all else. It means giving the young people power to identify their strengths and form a new context in which to live their lives.

This takes a skilled and dedicated teaching body committed to reshaping the educational model but all too often, where the best teachers are needed, few can be found. To counter this, the government has tried offering incentives to go and teach in the bush, as well as backing the Teach for Australia (TFA) program. Noble ideals, but we need to recognise that teaching is a craft; one that needs to be honed and continually adapted to meet the needs of an ever changing society. Just throwing money at the situation, or sending in graduates with little more than six weeks intensive training into the “thick of it” may have detrimental effects in the long term. In order to work in these schools you need a passion and dedication that the students feed off. You need to dedicate to them in the long term. Leaving after two years, as the majority of Teach for America (the model TFA was inspired by) Corps members do, often leads to more distrust of the educational system in the communities they were meant to engage. It remains to be seen what impact TFA will have on our poor communities. Of course I hope it is positive, I just hope that the government does not sit back and think that TFA is the only (or major) answer.

In order to address this poverty we need an attitudinal shift in society. Although we can’t give a dollar every time we are asked, we can reframe our thinking. We can recognise it for what it is; poverty.

If we do this maybe we will mobilise our efforts in the same way we do when Bono asks us to.

Maybe as a society we won’t cross the street, or avoid eye contact so as to deny its very existence.

Maybe governments will better fund outreach education programs; seriously consider the educational needs of the vastly different communities and recognise the need to redress the real purpose of education.

Maybe.