My Experiences with the Struggle

For this blog, I am going to describe my personal experience dealing with urban poverty. Now, as a disclaimer, it is nothing extreme as it is in africa, but I still know what it is like to struggle for meals, parents have to pay the most important bill instead of the bills like internet, and more other types of forms.

                                                       Khalil When he Was a Youngin

The lifestyle that my parents and I live is no where near poverty. We completely escaped that aspect as my parents have high paying jobs at ESPN and are still able to afford college for me. However, we still had our own experience with his low level of income.

ESPN

Back when my parents where in their early 20s, which seems like ages ago, they couldn't afford the luxury cars that we have now. Actually, the transportation that we used to have was the local city bus. "Residents face a unique set of challenges that our community-development systems are not designed to address, including limited public-transit options, a largely dispersed population, and fewer nonprofit service providers, to name a few." There were not too many options available to help us get to places so we had to take advantage of this option.

                                                                   City Bus

We couldn't buy the things we wanted to make us happy; we had to buy the things that were priorities. When it comes to video games, television, Netflix, instruments, and other aspects of entertainment, that was limited because rent was due in a couple of weeks, and a job at Barnes and Noble can't afford expensive materials. Therefore, I learned how to appreciate outdoor activities and friendships. I couldn't go to the mall everyday to buy expensive shoes and clothes. I couldn't go to arcades everyday an spend countless dollars on temporarily things. So, I invested in my education instead. I went to the library and read books for hours, and improved on my learning. Now, looking back it, I'm glad we went through this moment in our lives because we used this struggle to motivate us to be better. Now we know what a good day is because we had our fair shares of bad days.

Because of this, education has always been our number one to this today. Education "is the engine of social mobility, the avenue to better and more meaningful work and thus opportunity for one's family and community." So when people learn, learning isn't just sitting in a class room all day being taught by a professor or teacher. Learning could simply be by reading a book, googling a question that you didn't know the answer too, or even just ask you parents for an answer that sparks your curiosity. We are a social engine working together to keep the car functioning. We are the pieces that works cohesively to form a whole.

In areas with urban poverty, education is not the main priority.  It is not by choice, there are just more other things that requires more attention. For example, "Households of color, which will account for three quarters of household growth over the next decade, have extremely low access to the conventional mortgage market, relying instead on the Federal Housing Administration." People in urban poverty must focus on paying for mortgage and housing instead of affording a high quality education. A child does not have to go to a private school to receive high quality education, which costs money, but attending a public or charter school still cost some money to pay for books, supplies, and other necessities. "So one can't possibly establish an allowance based on, for example, the one textbook a family buys for each of its children." So, a rent payment might seem more important than education because its where they live. However, education is still the better investment.

Even tho education is the key to success, this term still seems kinda vague. In some districts, not all children receive equal quality education. This is called the achievement gap. "In 2009, among fourth-graders, the gaps between the percentage of black boys in large cities, scoring at or above proficient and the percentage of white boys in public schools across the nation scoring at or above proficient were 27 percentage points in reading and 39 percentage points in math" for this achievement gap. Anyone can receive an education like I previously stated above since learning is many different methods, but actually learning what you apply and using it is completely different. Because of this, it is clear that families not receiving education is not the problem or them not prioritizing it. The problem is the quality and the teaching of the education.