Forty-five years ago, I was a single mother on Welfare. My social worker told me about a new preschool program for children of low-income families. I thought Head Start would be a positive experience for my daughter. An intelligent little girl, she might learn many things going to school a half day, every day, things to help her in the future. Little did I know that enrolling her in Head Start would change my life then and continue to affect my life all these many years since.
I, too, had much to learn during the next forty-five years and I am still learning. Participation in Head Start as an ANTI-POVERTY program provided a structure which allowed me to empower myself. A number of boulders would be placed in my way. Fortunately, many persons and programs along the way made it possible for me to make changes in my life and achieve much more than I could have on my own.
Education was the key for the changes I wanted to make. Ultimately I earned a doctorate in Sociology from Virginia Tech. The research I did for my dissertation took me back to the Head Start program in which my daughter and I had participated. I learned much about the President Johnson's Great Society and myself. What made it possible for me to reach my goals?
Through my training as a sociologist, I came to realize I did not do it alone. I also, did not end up in poverty in the first place all on my own. Oh yes, I made some decisions which resulted in adding some the boulders to my path. I came to understand the choices available for me to make had been in some form shaped by the society into which I was born and raised and raised my children.
Today, there are those who say social programs developed to assist the poor and working-poor would only result in them continuing their dependence on "government assistance." What is needed, they say, is for "those folks" to learn that only hard work will get them out of the cycle of persistent poverty.
In 1994, as a result of discussion regarding social class and mobility, I began an online discussion/support group for academics from working-class and poverty-class backgrounds [WCPCA]. The effects of social class remain the members of WCPCA. We know it took more than the hard work we put into our careers for us to be where we are. We understand the impact of our social class roots. Many of us are activists, wanting to see the world become a better place, a place where hard work pays off for everyone.
Both groups, the folks at Head Start and especially the parents and staff who lived in poverty . . . and the working-class, poverty-class academics, understand more than hard work is required to move out of poverty and make it. If all it took was hard work, there would not be very many poor people in the world.
We understand the structure of the society we live in and the part it plays in the choices we have. Without such understanding, only a few persons at a time will reach their potential. Often the successes of those few are held up as an example of how anyone can get ahead if they work for it.
I imagine a piggy bank filled with coins. There is but one slot for the coins to leave the confines of the bank. Turn the piggy bank upside down and all the coins are shoved against one another, making it even more difficult for the coins to move through the slot, free. As long as we all keep acting as though we were coins in the bank, we will continue to push and shove against each other, and yet only a few coins makes it out and others are added to take their places. Only changing the structure of the bank, i.e. breaking it open, makes it possible for more to escape the confines of the piggy bank.
The principles of the War on Poverty created a unique structure allowing more of us to work on our own behalf to escape the confines of poverty. To be continued . . .
