There is a continuously increasing population that lives in abject poverty. Poverty entails pulling through life with very limited resources. The resources may range from financial, psychological, spiritual, security, and physical materials, for example lack of proper housing. I choose to address an article by Misty Locour and Laura Tissington from South Arkansas University. The article is entitled The Effect of Poverty on Child Education.
The two scholars start by observing that poverty or low income has a negative impact on the student’s academic performance (Misty, & Tissington, 2011). The family is a moving system meaning that it copes with changes that come along, but in the process relevantly maintain a stable positive effect on the children’s academic performance.
Too much expectations influence the student’s learning outcome, which in turn devastatingly affect parents. Family involvement in education needs entails a more comprehensive participation with educators having knowledge of family background.
Poverty or low income is attributed to many things among them family type for example, blended families, single parent families, mother’s education level, and source of income. Misty and Laura note that there is a big gap in achievement among students from varied income backgrounds.
Low socioeconomic status affects the chances of students performing well and their capability to complete schooling. Statistics indicate that students from poor families score less than twenty percentile in tests. Those from middle-income homes get an average of forty-five percentile whereas those from upper income backgrounds score a high percentile of seventy.
The two scholars have also identified the source of income as a major poor performance. They note that welfare children, meaning those under The Aid to families with Dependent Children program (AFCD), perform poorly compared to those depending on income from other sources.
They observe that aid works towards the student’s poor underperformance. The children on welfare programs are twice likely to perform poorly than those on other programs. The students who benefit from the welfare on short durations rank high on performance than those who are long-term beneficiaries.
This, the two scholars claim, is a clear indicator that aid affects the academic performance negatively. They further assert that aid is a medium through which laziness is created. The parents involved are most certainly people working in various industries or organizations. Since the food materials are already in supply, there would be no cause for working extra hard. The society in which aid is provided lacks role models to provide intellectual motivation (Amatea, 2012).
Misty and Laura discuss the level of education of the mother as being another cause of poor performance among students. They aver that this is very significant because it touches on adolescents. The level of education of the mother has more effects than the father’s level of education.
This is associated with the closeness that mothers have with children. The presence of the mother serves to increase the supply of reading materials in the house, fostering family beliefs, and values Families with increased income has an increased number of children in early child education.
This therefore according to Misty and Laura means that poor families and communities do not give education due attention. This creates strenuous working relationships between the educators and students. This is mainly in areas involving student’s actions versus instructions from teachers.
References
Amatea, E. (2012). Building Culturally Responsive Family-School Relationships. New York: Pearson Learning Solutions.
Misty, L., & Tissington, L. (2011). The effects of poverty on academic achievement. Educational Research and Reviews, 6(7), 522-527.