There's really no reason why this should be. I'd suspect it's more of a mindset thing. Parents pass on their lack of initiative to their children.
A "mindset thing".
There we go: more smug entitlement and judgementalism.
Have you ever spent any time around people who grew up in generational poverty?
Around children currently living in generational poverty?
I watched a disadvantaged young mom reading a children's book to her four-year-old daughter the other day.
She was doing the very best she could. She knows it is important to read to children. She wants her daughter to have a good life.
She read the best she could, although her best was slow and halting. I would be willing to bet money nobody ever read to
her. Her parents may not have known how to read. They undoubtedly didn't speak much English.
So, she was reading to her daughter.
She came to the word "scarce" in the story. Paused. Crinkled her forehead in confusion.
Pronounced it, tentatively, "scars".
She had never encountered the word. Nobody in her life had ever used it.
She knew "scars" wasn't right, but she valiantly attempted to keep reading.
A few pages later, she stumbled over another two-syllable word she'd never heard before. Then three more, in rapid succession.
She was losing the gist of the story entirely. She began to sneer every time she encountered one of these weird words, waving the air with her hand as if waving nonsense away. He daughter, watching her, began to mimic her and do the same.
Her daughter would not grow up to know or speak these words either.
They would not be part of her world.
To me, this anecdote really illustrates everything one needs to know about generational poverty.
It's not material poverty; it's a poverty of the
mind.
Children raised in generational poverty don't have half the vocabulary of more affluent children when they start kindergarten. Right out of the starting gate, they're already disadvantaged, and it only gets worse.
The teacher says words that she thinks every five-year-old, even an imbecile, should be able to understand.
Children raised in generational poverty don't understand, though, because they've never heard them.
They get more and more lost, fall further behind. Their self-esteem suffers.
What good would it do to ask for help understanding a particular word, when they don't understand
half of what the teacher says, when the teacher will probably just use
more words they don't understand if they ask for an explanation?
They could ask their parents, except their parents don't know these words, either.
Maybe they're not important, since their parents, friends, and neighbors don't know them or use them.
Soon, these children are sneering at the teacher and her stupid, crazy words, just like the young mother I described was sneering at that children's book she tried unsuccessfully to read to her daughter.
By second or third grade, these children will probably have blocked out the stupid talk entirely. They sit in class zoning out, waiting to get old enough that they won't have to come to school anymore. School has nothing to do with their lives, and does nothing to prepare them for their futures.
Anyway. That's what I've seen.
That's
one aspect of generational poverty.
Some of them don't even understand us when we talk.... and I'm referring even to those for whom English is a first and
only language.
That's a pretty big disadvantage.
Children not exposed to intellectual stimulation in their early years do not develop as many brain synapses.
They will never catch up.
Parents do the best they can, but they were likewise unexposed, and are likewise disadvantaged. And so on, and so on.
OK, let's everyone stop the personal attacks and get back to the topic.
