PDK International | Phi Delta Kappan: Lewis V78 N3 pp 186-187 Nov 1996

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Breaking the Cycle of Poverty

By Anne C. Lewis

RECENTLY, an article on welfare reform that appeared in the publication of an education group conveyed a message that essentially said, "Don't worry. The details don't affect us much." True. The specifics of the legislation probably won't mean much more to schools than some changes on the fringes, but this analysis fails to look at the big picture. From a wide-angle perspective, virtually everyone is in the view finder, and even the most privileged students and their families will be drawn in eventually because what is done (or not done) for the least of us will affect us all.

The poor and their problems are so complex that blame is passed around freely and solutions are fractured into pieces too small to have much impact. Some maintain that teachers and administrators, even those in the most disadvantaged schools, are justified in believing that they cannot have much of an effect on the lives of the poorest children because of what happens outside the school and what has occurred before these youngsters are old enough even to attend school.

That is pure nonsense. At the core of the problems of those on or nearly on welfare is the inadequacy of the schools' efforts to teach what they should teach first and foremost - language. Above all else, young children must be taught to read, write, speak, and listen so well that they can use these skills competently and can interpret increasingly challenging material.

Unfortunately, three-fourths of all welfare/food stamp recipients perform at the lowest levels of literacy as defined by the National Adult Literacy Survey. And this is not a problem of race and ethnicity. The largest number of welfare mothers who will soon be required to be skilled enough to join the work force are white. Higher percentages of blacks and Hispanics are on welfare, but whites outnumber them. This is a problem of class.
Similarly, low levels of literacy result in low employment rates and lower wages. Not having literacy skills usually makes it impossible for an individual to break out of the intergenerational cycles of poverty. In the long run, the higher the income of a family, the more education succeeding generations receive. This is a puzzle that only higher literacy skills among citizens in the lower economic strata can solve.

Drawing from the same data provided by the National Adult Literacy Survey, researchers at the Educational Testing Service found that two-thirds of prison inmates are also at the lowest levels of literacy. If the current trend toward higher prison rates continues, according to the ETS researchers, there soon will be more people in prison than in four-year colleges. It is chilling to think of a society that fills its prisons with uneducated (mostly young) men and women and fails to see the connection between good education and good lives.

But how do we break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy? It becomes clearer if we start by sorting out the populations and setting priorities for immediate attention. There are young mothers and fathers whose literacy skills must be made good enough to prevent their children from reliving the cycle of low skills/low wages. There are teenage mothers with poor literacy skills who must be prepared for an increasingly demanding workplace, and there are teenagers at risk of dropping out and/or starting families too early. Finally, there are the unborn, who should be able to count on entering families that are prepared to think of the future of their newest members from the moment of their births.

Here are four research-based proposals that - if adopted by educators, schools, and communities - might finally break the intergenerational cycle of poverty that blights the lives of children.

For young children already in the system, educate their parents, especially the mothers, to the hilt. The educational level of mothers is the most important influence on the educational attainment of children. Certainly, many poor parents need help in providing a literacy-rich environment for their children, but it is equally important to tend to the literacy levels of the parents themselves. However, more than half of the adult basic education programs offered to parents and others are sponsored by the schools, and research indicates that adults who have failed in this system once are unlikely to stay very long in traditional educational programs. There are more successful models for adult learning that schools need to know about and use. (One exception to the rule that adults tend to leave literacy programs is the case of foreign-born adults seeking English skills; the demand for programs for such individuals far exceeds the supply.)
For welfare mothers (most of them teenagers) who must now make it in the job world, combine educational and contextual training. This means direct education for meaningful job goals. Cognitive researcher Thomas Sticht, drawing on results from the military, business, and education, argues that young people can learn basic skills best when education is embedded in job preparation. When people use the literacy skills they are learning in their work, he says, they not only improve their literacy and productivity levels but also increase their language use with their children and in their communities.
For youngsters who are at risk of making bad decisions, push them toward college. That's absurd, many teachers might say, referring to the low achievement of these students. However, just that single ray of hope - the hope for postsecondary education - is related to staying in school and to delaying sexual activity, according to data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS-88). Those who were eighth-graders in 1988 and indicated that they planned on attending college were much more likely to graduate -- whatever their race or ethnicity -- than were those who believed they would only make it through high school.
For generations to come, start literacy enrichment in the delivery room. We know enough from studies of infant development and research into cognition to understand that early language stimulation - from the moment of birth - influences brain development and later learning success. Young parents from poor circumstances ought to leave the hospital as participants in support networks that will help them develop the language abilities of their babies. That support should be consistent and continuous until the school system becomes a partner with parents.

These four initiatives would require some shifting of resources, a commitment by the schools to educate families as well as children, and new skills on the part of educators to adapt research-based strategies to the needs of those caught in the cycle of poverty.

Public policy makers have decided, unwisely in the opinion of many, that poverty is a mindset characteristic of those who are dependent on public support. Educators, the members of our society most likely to value literacy, know that this is a simplistic view. Welfare reform is not going to eliminate poverty, nor will an excellent education system that is not paired with access to jobs. But informed commitment on the part of educators to set standards of literacy for all children and young people and to make sure that they meet them would be the best way for those in education to do their part in breaking the cycle of poverty.

ANNE C. LEWIS is a national education policy writer living in the Washington, D.C., area (e-mail: aclewis@crosslink.net).