Wealth and Poverty

This week is National School Choice Week—a well-orchestrated PR event to celebrate “school choice.”

The week of nationwide events even kicked off with a party in New Orleans complete with performances by The Temptations and Ellis Marsalis. It’s a lot of fanfare in the name of choice. And choice is an attractive word. As American as apple pie, it’s hard to pick an argument with choice. Options, we believe, are always good.

But that’s not always the case.

A few years ago, a picture from The Roanoke Times became the fodder for emails and blog posts. It spread across the Internet in a matter of days, eventually ending up on late-night network talk shows. 

It began as part of a simple and obscure local news story about road construction. In the article, a pregnant woman in her 30s wondered what effect the high decibel sounds of jackhammers and earth-moving equipment would have on her unborn child.

What made this conjecture so worthy of scorn and mockery? 

Several stacks of fake dollar bills enclosed in a Plexiglas case sit at the center of an exhibit entitled “RACE: Are We So Different?” at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. One stack towers over the others. This teetering pile of bills represents the average net worth of “white” people’s assets in relation to those of other racialized groups based upon data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau from 1997 to 2000. While the “Asian” stack is almost as high, the “black” stack can hardly be called a stack at all; the “Latino” stack is almost as low.

One of the most powerful gifts we can give our children—for the future of our nation—is a college education. It may, in fact, be the most powerful gift. For so many of our country’s greatest success stories, the golden ticket that launched the inspiring life was the chance to go to college.

I recently overheard a lot of talk in the hallways about holiday gifts that students want or deals they had found during the Black Friday mad rush of sales. It made me think about how oftentimes, on returning from winter break, I would discuss with other students the laundry list of things they received as gifts. I’ve always been careful to not assume that every student celebrates Christmas or Hanukkah and the gift giving that comes with that. But it dawned on me, just that morning, that my informal discussions with students about gifts and presents has the potential to quickly marginalize our students in poverty, regardless of the time and traditions of their gift giving.

I asked a small group of second-graders what they would like to find inside their mailboxes. That was after we read a story about a goose who opened her mailbox and found a kite. I expected to hear answers of things: video games, toys or basketballs. But the first student who raised her hand looked at me with sincere, big brown eyes and said, "I'd like to find a letter from my dad."

In my classroom, my kids say the profoundest things.

I hear the crunch of gravel beneath my feet and feel the sting of mosquito bites on my legs. In my reverie, I see my brother and me launching walnuts, and I laugh at how lucky we were Grandma didn’t catch us when our aim went awry and hard green shells assaulted the mailbox instead. The farm in my daydream is Dysart Woods’ Farm, which is owned by Ohio University and encompasses 400 acres of farmland and 50 acres of virgin forest.

The opening scene of the 2004 film Yesterday shows a mother (named Yesterday) and her daughter Beauty, walking down a deserted South African road. The daughter, maybe 5 years old, is describing her desire to transform into a bird. Why? She wants to float over to their destination, relieving her little legs of the agony of this miles-long trek.

The finish line is a health clinic in a ramshackle hut. You see, Yesterday has developed this wretched, knock-you-over cough. But the line is lengthy, so they wait and wait until it’s announced that everyone else must return next Tuesday.

Next Tuesday? A once-a-week doctor? Yes.